It's Good to be Slim
Many people who visit the restaurant ask us about the very cool photo on our North wall. Believe it or not this is a real party and these characters are not actors. The piece is the work of artist Slim Aarons (1916-2006), an American photographer noted for photographing socialites, jet-setters and celebrities.
This work was taken at a poolside party at a desert house, designed by Richard Neutra for Edgar J. Kaufmann, in Palm Springs, January 1970. Featured in the group are: industrial designer Raymond Loewy (1893 – 1986, centre, standing), Nelda Linsk (in yellow), wife of art dealer Joseph Linsk, and Helen Dzo Dzo (second from right).
Aarons never used a stylist, or a makeup artist.
He made his career out of what he called “photographing attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places.” “I knew everyone,” he said in an interview with The (London) Independent in 2002. “They would invite me to one of their parties because they knew I wouldn’t hurt them. I was one of them.” Alfred Hitchcock‘s film, Rear Window, whose main character is a photographer played by Jimmy Stewart, is set in an apartment reputed to be based on Aarons’s apartment.
