Audrey Withers was determined her magazine would be political, progressive and powerful. She commissioned Lee Miller to take photos from the front – and created a publication that went far beyond fashion
Amid the rubble of a bombed building stands a woman, immaculate in hat and gloves, wearing the kind of nipped-in suit that screams 1940s chic.
Her back is to the camera, her expression unreadable as she surveys the wreckage. But the caption reads: “Fashion is indestructible.” Even in the midst of horror, this image by the legendary
fashion photographer Cecil Beaton is saying, women’s lives go on. Yet they cannot be untouched by the world around them, nor unchanged by it.