Brian Stonehouse

Small exhibition at Abbott and Holder of fashion drawings by Brian Stonehouse.

These were very stylish, Mad Men like drawings done for Vogue from 1952. The images all had buff or grey backgrounds which accentuated the clothes and those clothes were very classic and chic. I liked the pictures of the men best as they were both 1950s and straight laced and a bit camp. My favourite was a classic Don Draper style man in a suit and a hat and carrying a coat.

More interesting though was the biography in the leaflet which pointed out that Stonehouse had been a spy in the war and ended up as a prisoner of Dachau. In one camp the guards had made him draw pictures of them and their families and the Imperial War Museum holds the drawings he made of the liberation of Dachau. Now those I would like to see.

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