Slim Aarons first visited Palm Beach in the early 1950s on assignment for Holiday, a sophisticated mid-century travel magazine. This was during the early days of his four-decade-long career. After his experiences as a WWII combat photographer in North Africa and Europe, Aarons returned home with a newfound determination to photograph “attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places.” In the span of a few years, this quest had taken him to Hollywood, Newport, London, Rome, his hometown of New York, and, naturally, Florida’s Gold Coast. By 1952, the 100-mile stretch from Hobe Sound to Miami Beach, according to Holiday, had become an American Riviera.
Aarons built a career collecting attractive places like shells on a beach, but in his mind, one Florida city glittered like no other. He described Palm Beach as the queen of winter resorts and, most tellingly, considered it a physical manifestation of the American dream. For a self-made freelance photogapher born to immigrant parents in a tenement building on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, there was no higher form of praise.
Palm Beach was filled with attractive people, and Aarons wasted no time in capturing them at their best. Under his gaze, C.Z. Guest was effortlessly chic, Peter Pulitzer tanned and relaxed, and Laddie Sanford stoic and rugged.
Dressed to a T
C.Z. Guest and her customized model T, Palm Beach, 1955.
On a Rolls
Mr. and Mrs. Donald Leas, Jr. outside the Flagler Museum, 1968. Donald Leas Jr. worked alongside Lilly Pulitzer and launched Pulitzer’s men’s collection.
Pretty in Pink
C. Z. Guest and Joanne Connolly in Palm Beach at Villa Artemis, Guest’s family home in Palm Beach, 1955.
Sunny Runway
Poolside fashion show at the Colony Hotel, Palm Beach, 1962.
The Old School
Harold K. Vanderbilt at his home at Manalapan, his Palm Beach home, 1956.
Flower Power
Charles Amory III outside his flower shop, “The Flower Cart” on Via Mizner, Palm Beach, 1972. Charles and his wife Julia were responsible for the flower arrangements at many Palm Beach parties.
The Old School
Painter John Orr and Diana “Dysie” Davie in the living room of her Worth Avenue home, Palm Beach, 1970.
All of these scenes and many more are gathered in Slim Aarons: The Essential Collection, a 432-page tome weighing more than eight pounds. The book is the first to focus on the full arc of Aarons’s extraordinary journey from the front lines to the summit of American high society. Sumptuously bound in blue and gold, the monograph is full of unexpected images alongside his most celebrated works.
Fresh off the book’s success, author and curator Shawn Waldron has organized a new exhibition: Slim Aarons: Gold Coast, which opened recently at the Ann Norton Sculpture Garden in West Palm Beach. Gold Coast features iconic works from Florida along with dozens of little-known images from Aarons’s archives, plus a gallery dedicated to his 20-year collaboration with Palm Beach stalwart Lilly Pulitzer.
Aarons dedicated a chapter of his first book, A Wonderful Time: An Intimate Portrait of The Good Life, to Palm Beach. The book was a commercial flop upon its release in 1974, but it is now a collector’s item, with pristine copies fetching up to $2,000 at auction. A Wonderful Time is filled with personal anecdotes and memories that convey the sense of amazement Aarons felt for the life he had been lucky enough to live and the glittering people he had befriended along the way.
Slim Aarons: The Essential Collection (Abrams) is out now. Slim Aarons: Gold Coast will be at the Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens through January 26, 2025.