Testino

Photographer Mario Testino is loved by supermodels, magazine editors and movie stars because of his uncanny knack of making beautiful subjects exquisite.

Now the National Portrait Gallery is to stage a major exhibition of his work, which will open next year.

More than 120 of Testino's finest images of subjects including Liz Hurley, Robbie Williams and Catherine Zeta Jones will grace the gallery's walls from February to June next year.

Sections of the exhibition will be devoted to four of his favourite models: Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Moss, Madonna and Diana Princess of Wales, whom Testino photographed shortly before her death in 1997.

Testino believes one of the most important elements of a successful shoot is putting his subjects at ease. When photographing Diana, he said: "I sat with Diana on the sofa and talked. Then I just started photographing. I believe if you spend your day laughing with your subject then the pictures are pretty good."

Testino, 46, was born in Peru but moved to London in the 1980s where he started his formal photographic training after friends convinced him to quit his job as a waiter. By the early 1990s he had become one of fashion's most sought-after photographers. He said: "I found how to produce sexy, beautiful young women who knew how to wear clothes. They were believable - you wanted to meet them."

After Helmut Newton at the Barbican, the current Radical Fashion exhibition at the V&A and now this major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery fashion, it seems, is slowly becoming a recognised art form - and not just by those who work in couture.