BELLAS ARTES

Slim Aarons: Style showcases the photographs that both recorded and influenced the luminaries of the fashion world. This collectible volume features luscious early black-and-white fashion photography, as well as color portraits of the fashionable elite—like Jacqueline de Ribes, C.Z. Guest, Nan Kempner, and Marisa Berenson—and those that designed the clothes, such as Oscar de la Renta, Emilio Pucci, Mary McFadden, and Lilly Pulitzer. ​Featuring a number of never-before-seen images and detailed captions written by fashion historians, Slim Aarons: Style is a collection of the photographer’s most stylish work. Slim Aarons, at least according to the man himself, did not photograph fashion: “I didn’t do fashion. I did the people in their clothes that became the fashion.” But despite what he claimed, Aarons’s work is indelibly tied to fashion. Aarons’s incredibly influential photographs of high society and socialites being unambiguously themselves are still a source of inspiration for modern day style icons. This coffee table book is perfect for sharing, displaying, and gifting.

Leanne Ford’s imperfectly perfect designs inspire more than half a million social media fans daily. In this very personal design book, she shares her decorating philosophy, wry humor, and advice to live by. The Slow Down offers readers an inside look at how Leanne found her “wow does this need work” dream house and then moved (with her family in tow) across the country to turn it into a welcoming home. Her story has a rebellious soul that is refreshingly different from other interior design books: She encourages readers to slow down in their personal environments and celebrate the beauty of everyday moments. The Slow Down’s photos and narrative present a home tour like no other, stopping to recount crazy ideas (not always crazy!) and to offer thoughts on what makes a design really good and why Elsie De Wolfe is still right (about most things). You will come away with a new perspective and new ideas on how to make your home more joyful, elevated, and funky, fun, and just right.

How do you make your home come alive with personality, charm, and memory? In the introduction to Sean Scherer’s first book, Kabinett & Kammer: Creating Authentic Interiors, Anderson Cooper writes, “Scherer has a unique ability to place otherwise ordinary objects in a completely unexpected context or grouping and in so doing change the way you see them.” In Sean Scherer’s Vignettes, Scherer focuses in on the art of combining common objects into aesthetically pleasing groupings, or vignettes. Contending that a vignette can set the whole mood and tone of a room, he shows you how to use any surface in your home, from a tabletop to a bookshelf to a wall, to create lively displays of your favorite items. Beautifully illustrated with Scherer’s own photographs, the book demonstrates how to balance color, texture, and shape, and provides lessons on how to create both symmetrical and asymmetrical vignettes.

Poolside with Slim Aarons offers images of jet-setters and the wealthy, of beautiful, glittering people living the glamorous life. Yet this collection of stunning photographs of the rich and well-connected “doing attractive things” in their favorite playgrounds has a twist: The main character is pools, and everything that goes with them. Pools bring with them images of magnificent, suntanned bodies; well-oiled skin; bikini-clad women; yachts; summer cocktails; sumptuous buffets; spectacular locations; and most of all: fun. Poolside is not so much a who’s who of society, aristocracy, and celebrity—although C. Z. Guest, Lilly Pulitzer, Cheryl Tiegs, Peter Beard, and many who have appeared in Slim's previous books are here—as it is about leisure time and how the rich make use of it. This is a more intimate peek into very private lives, to which photographer Slim Aarons was given unprecedented access in the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties. This coffee table book is perfect for sharing, displaying, and gifting.

Richard Mishaan is renowned for his masterly integration of textiles, palettes rich in complementary shades, natural materials forged by artisans, surfaces bedecked with talismanic curios, a strategic sense of when and where to place a mirror, and a deep knowledge of both the fine and decorative arts. His many influences, including his upbringing in Colombia, coupled with his idiosyncratic perspective, explain why his sophisticated clientele return repeatedly as their lives evolve. In Richard Mishaan Design, his working methods are revealed in projects as varied as the conversion of a 400-year-old barn in the Hamptons into a warm, inviting family home and the transformation of an ultra-modern, glass-walled New York City apartment into a comfortable yet sophisticated aerie. Here too are show houses, which he uses as experimental laboratories, working out such diverse design ideas as updating legendary designer Renzo Mongiardino’s aesthetic and achieving a chic look on a tight budget. He has also designed rooms in bespoke hotels, ranging from the Rat Pack–influenced Shelborne South Beach in Miami to the Tcherassi, a renovated 250-year-old mansion in Cartagena, Colombia.

Whether a brand-new country estate, a renovation of a triplex penthouse apartment, or a merging of two townhouses into one, each of the 20 projects in this sumptuously illustrated volume bears the hallmarks of Peter Pennoyer Architects’ work: skillful adaptation of the principles of classical architecture, sophisticated use of details and materials, and insistence on meticulous craftsmanship, resulting in a balance of comfort, beauty, and luxury. The firm’s architects worked with exceptional interior designers, including Katie Ridder, Miles Redd, Steven Gambrel, and Jacques Grange, to create these residences, and though all are grounded in the classical tradition, each is singularly tailored to its location and the individual taste of the client. With an authoritative text by architectural historian Anne Walker and hundreds of specially commissioned full-color photographs, site plans, and floor plans throughout, Peter Pennoyer Architects: City and Country showcases residential architecture at its finest.