Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.

Beaton took the famous wedding pictures of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (wearing an haute couture ensemble by the noted American fashion designer Mainbocher). ISBN 1-55611-021-9. "
Beaton left Cambridge without a degree in 1925.

He was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1970. Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton CBE (14 January 1904 – 18 January 1980) was an English fashion portrait and war photographer diarist painter interior designer and an Academy Award-winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre.