Cecil Beaton was knighted in the 1972 New Year Honours.

Two years later he suffered a stroke that would leave him permanently paralysed on the right side of his body. Although he learnt to write and draw with his left hand, and had cameras adapted, Beaton became frustrated by the limitations the stroke had put upon his work.

As a result of his stroke, Beaton became anxious about financial security for his old age and, in 1976, entered into negotiations with Philippe Garner, expert-in-charge of photographs at Sotheby's. On behalf of the auction house, Garner acquired Beaton's archive—excluding all portraits of the Royal Family, and the five decades of prints held by Vogue in London, Paris and New York. Garner, who had almost singlehandedly invented the photographic auction, oversaw the archive's preservation and partial dispersal, so that Beaton's only tangible assets, and what he considered his life's work, would ensure him an annual income. The first of five auctions was held in 1977, the last in 1980.

By the end of the 1970s, Beaton's health had faded. He died on 18 January 1980, at Reddish House, his home in Broad Chalke, Wiltshire, four days after his 76th birthday

Gorgeously repackaged, this reissue of the classic book presents the iconic photographer’s expert and witty reminiscences of the personalities who inspired fashion’s golden eras, and left an indelible mark on his own sense of taste and style. "The camera will never be invented that could capture or encompass all that he actually sees," Truman Capote once said of Cecil Beaton. Though known for his portraits, Beaton was as incisive a writer as he was a photographer. First published in 1954, The Glass of Fashion is a classic—an invaluable primer on the history and highlights of fashion from a man who was a chronicler of taste, and an intimate compendium of the people who inspired his legendary eye. Across eighteen chapters, complemented by more than 150 of his own line drawings, Beaton writes with great wit about the influence of luminaries such as Chanel, Balenciaga, and Dior, as well as relatively unknown muses like his Aunt Jessie, who gave him his first glimpse of "the grown-up world of fashion." Out of print for decades but recognized and sought after as a touchstone text, The Glass of Fashion will be irresistible to a new generation of fashion enthusiasts and a seminal book in any Beaton library. It is both a treasury and a treasure.

This book offers five decades of Beaton's Royal portraits, capturing, in many never-before-seen photographs, the history, romance, and majestic grandeur of royalty, as well as the human side of the Royal Family

Charlène, Princess of Monaco is a former South African Olympic swimmer and currently wife of Prince Albert II of Monaco.

Charlene Lynette Wittstock was born in Bulawayo Africa and the family relocated to Transvaal Prince South Africa in 1989. Wittstock was passionate about swimming from a very young age and she gave up study to concentrate on competitive swimming and at 18 won the Championship of South Africa for juniors.

In 2000, Wittstock represented South Africa at Sydney Olympics, with her team finishing fifth in the 4 × 100 metre medley relay. Wittstock retired from competitive swimming in 2007 due to shoulder injury.

Wittstock met Prince Albert at the Mare Nostrum swimming competition in Monte Carlo, Monaco, in 2000 and they went public at the opening ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. 

Since then Charlene Wittstock accompanied him on many of his official duties and engagements such as  the weddings of the Crown Princess of Sweden in June 2010 and the Duke of Cambridge in 2011.

Charlene, who was raised a Protestant, converted to Roman Catholicism for the preparation of her role as royal consort, even though this is not a requirement of the Constitution of Monaco. She was also instructed in the French language and the Monégasque dialect, as well as European court protocol. 

On 1 July 2011 the couple were married in a civil ceremony in the Throne Room of the Prince's Palace. Charlene wore a powder blue jacket with long dress by Chanel, cocreated by her and Karl Lagerfeld.

And the religious ceremony was held in the Palace courtyard, with the bride wearing white silk Duchesse wedding gown of Giorgio Armani Prive, with a 15-ft veil made of tulle anchored by a "Diamond Spray" tiara by Lorez Baumer that featured eleven encrusted diamond pears. The gown was embellished with 40,000 Swarovski crystals, 20,000 mother of pearl teardrops, and 30,000 stones in gold shades. It took 2,500 hours to make, with the embroidery taking 700 hours, on 130m of off-white silk. 

After the wedding ceremonies, Charlene Wittstock became Her Serene Highness The Princess of Monaco replacing her mother-in-law, Grace Kelly.

After her marriage, Charlène, Princess of Monaco devoted herself increasingly to charity and humanitarian works and is involved in various organizations: Princess Charlène of Monaco Foundation, Ladies Lunch Monte-Carlo, Special Olympics, Nelson Mandela Foundation, asfAR, The Giving Organisation, and Monaco Against Autism.

After her divorce, Kaufmann resumed her career, acting in dozens of films and tv series, notably the supporting roles in the Rainer Werner Fassbinder films Lili Marleen and Lola. She often worked with German director Helmut Dietl, for example in the satirical television series Monaco Franze (Der ewige Stenz).  ​

Kaufmann married three more times: to television director Achim Lenz (1974–76), musician and actor Reno Eckstein (1979-1982) and illustrator Klaus Zey (1997-2011). 

She spoke three languages: her native language German, English, and French. and she enjoyed traveling and moved from one place to another frequently—a pattern that she believed she had inherited from her Circassian forefathers. 

In 2014, Christine Kaufmann played Aunt Polly in the German version of American film Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn. It would be her last acting role. ​

After the wedding, the media attention surrounding the couple intensified, and Bessette-Kennedy often found it difficult to deal with the harassment. When the couple returned from their honeymoon, a mass of reporters was waiting on their doorstep.

John said, "Getting married is a big adjustment for us, and for a private citizen like Carolyn even more so. I ask you to give her all the privacy and room you can."

Bessette-Kennedy was badly disoriented by the constant attention from the paparazzi. The couple was permanently on show, both at fashionable Manhattan events and on their travels to visit celebrities such as Mariuccia Mandelli and Gianni Versace.Bessette-Kennedy told her friend, Carole Radziwill, that the only way to avoid the paparazzi was to leave her apartment at 7 in the morning. She also complained to her friend, journalist Jonathan Soroff, that she could not get a job without being accused of exploiting her fame. Her minimalist "throwaway chic" fashion sense was chronicled by various fashion publications and drew repeated comparisons to her mother-in-law, former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

While the interest surrounding the couple continued, Bessette-Kennedy refused to give interviews and turned down offers to appear in fashion magazines. Towards the end of her life, Bessette-Kennedy became more involved with charity work and often accompanied her husband to dinners at the White House (the couple were given a tour by President Bill Clinton in March 1998) and acted as the hostess for parties for her husband's political magazine George.

According to some reports published after their deaths, the Kennedys were experiencing marital problems and contemplating divorce in the months preceding their deaths.[17] The couple had various disagreements, including her refusal to start a family, John’s work on the George magazine where she felt forsaken, and her dislike of John’s publishing partner Michael Berman. According to Vanity Fair, Bessette-Kennedy's "insecurity fueled a need to control and manipulate; her frequent use of cocaine made her paranoid". Moreover, Bessette-Kennedy was jealous of and barely on speaking terms with her sister-in-law Caroline Kennedy, who reportedly criticized the bride for being late to her own wedding and wearing heels on the beach.

However, close friends reject the divorce claims. Robert Littell, who spent the weekend with John and Carolyn a week before their deaths, also reject the allegation that the couple were living apart at the time of their deaths.

In his book, The Kennedy Curse: Why Tragedy Has Haunted America's First Family for 150 Years, author Edward Klein claimed that the couple's problems reportedly stemmed from Bessette-Kennedy's difficulty dealing with the media attention surrounding her and the marriage, accusations of infidelity, disagreements about having children, and Bessette-Kennedy's alleged cocaine use. Although Klein is the author of several Kennedy books, John Kennedy Jr. said, when speaking of Klein, "he is a guy who had lunch with my mother twenty years ago and has been dining out on it ever since." Friends of the couple's, including John Perry Barlow and Christiane Amanpour, said that Bessette-Kennedy and Kennedy fought on occasion and that Bessette-Kennedy had trouble adjusting to the intense media coverage, but denied that she used drugs or that the couple was planning to divorce. The couple began seeing a marriage counselor in March 1999 and sought counseling from Cardinal John O'Connor in the summer of 1999. ​

​Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy died on July 16, 1999, along with her husband John F. Kennedy Jr. and her older sister Lauren, when the light plane John was piloting crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the western coast of Martha's Vineyard. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the probable cause of the crash was: "The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during a descent over water at night, which was a result of spatial disorientation. Factors in the accident were haze and the dark night."

After a five day search, the wreckage was discovered in the late afternoon of July 21. The bodies were recovered from the ocean floor by Navy divers and taken by motorcade to the county medical examiner's office, where autopsies revealed that the crash victims had died upon impact. At the same time, the Kennedy and Bessette families announced their plans for memorial services.

Toxicology testing was conducted on the pilot and passengers. All tested negative for alcohol and drugs. In the late hours of July 21, the three bodies were taken from Hyannis to Duxbury, where they were cremated in the Mayflower Cemetery crematorium.

​On the morning of July 22, their ashes were scattered from the Navy ship USS Briscoe off the coast of Martha's Vineyard.

Charles Wilson Brega James (18 July 1906 – 23 September 1978) was an English-American fashion designer. He is best known for his ballgowns and highly structured aesthetic. James is one of the most influential fashion designers of the 20th century and continues to influence new generations of designers.

Charles James is one of less than a handful of American designers to have worked in the pure tradition of haute couture. He has been described as the greatest couturier of his time by some of the Parisian couturiers of his time. James was most famous for his unique ability to balance the intuition of an artist with the precise technical skill of an engineer.

Charles ​James' father was a British army officer and his mother came from a wealthy Chicago family. In 1919, he attended Harrow School where he met Evelyn Waugh, Francis Cyril Rose, and Cecil Beaton, with whom he formed a longstanding friendship. He was expelled from Harrow for a "sexual escapade".
​
After that, James briefly studied music at the University of Bordeaux in France before he went to Chicago to work. The utilities magnate Samuel Insull, a friend of the family, found him a position in the architectural design department where he acquired the mathematical skills that later enabled him to create his gowns.

At the age of nineteen, James opened his first milliner shop in Chicago, using the name of "Charles Boucheron", as his father forbade him to use that of James.

In 1928, James left Chicago for Long Island with 70 cents, a Pierce Arrow, and a number of hats as his only possessions. He later opened a millinery shop above a garage in Murray Hill, Queens, New York, beginning his first dress designs. At the time, he presented himself as a "sartorial structural architect". By 1930, he had designed the spiral zipped dress and the taxi dress ("so easy to wear it could be slipped on in the backseat of a taxi").

From New York James moved to London, setting up shop in Mayfair. He designed the wedding dress for Baba Beaton, Cecil Beaton's sister, for her marriage in 1934. James created a modern interpretation of the white wedding dress, with a raised neckline and divided train. In 1936, he established the company Charles James (London) Ltd., using his own name officially for the first time.

James also spent time in Paris in the early 1930s, working from the Hôtel Lancaster.He showed his first collection in the French capital in 1937. That same year, he created a one-of-a-kind white satin quilted jacket described by Salvador Dalí as "the first soft sculpture" and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum collections.This jacket has been considered the starting point for "anoraks, space man and even fur jackets".In the 1930s, he also invented the Pavlovian waistband that expands after a meal.

Meanwhile, he licensed his fashion designs with American department stores such as Lord & Taylor and Bergdorf Goodman.

James moved permanently to New York in 1939 where he established Charles James, Inc. At the end of the Second World War, he designed a clothing line for Elizabeth Arden.

In 1947, James showed a collection in Paris. ​

In 1948, Millicent Rogers, one of Charles Jame's most loyal and important clients,  organized an exhibition of the outfits he made for her at the Brooklyn Museum, entitled "A Decade of Design for Mrs Millicent H. Rogers by Charles James".

In the early 1950s, James spent most of his time in New York City at his Madison Avenue workshop. He won two Coty Awards, in 1950 and 1954, and one Neiman Marcus Award in 1953. That same year Charles James conceived the "Four-Leaf Clover" or "Abstract" ballgown for the journalist Austine Hearst. It was the dress James ranked as his best creation.This dress weighed no less than 12 pounds and had to be supported by a rigid structure.

​In 1954, Charles James married Nancy Lee Gregory from Kansas, 20 years his junior. And in 1958 he retired.

In 1964, he moved to the Hotel Chelsea where he had three sixth-floor rooms for his work space, office, and apartment. 


Charles James died in 1978 of bronchial pneumonia.

:In May 2014, concomitantly to the James retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum:Charles James, beyond Fashion, The Weinstein Company (TWC) announced it had signed a license agreement with James's heirs, Charles Jr. and Louise James, to produce new collections, and thus contribute to the brand revival. Two years of legal battle followed, opposing the heirs, who sought to file the brand to the name of their father, against the Luvanis company, which had already registered the brand in an array of jurisdictions worldwide.

In June 2016, TWC withdrew, Luvanis thereafter partnered with James' heirs to revive the Charles James brand. In September 2018, they revealed a new visual identity for Charles James, and put up for sale all the brands rights, which have been consolidated in the previous years