SLIM ARRONS, LILLY PULITZER AND…SUZIE ZUZEK?

Since the days of Henry Flagler and the founding of the Florida East Coast Railway, New Yorkers have enjoyed a long connection to Palm Beach (1894). Due to the pandemic, there seem to be more New Yorkers moving to Palm Beach than ever-and paying a handsome price for the privilege. An ocean front home like Villa Artemis would sell for more than $100 million today. Palm Beach is a special place and Photographer Slim Aarons knew this and photographed many “beautiful people doing beautiful things” there, including CZ Guest, Wendy Vanderbilt, and Patsy, Peter and Lilly Pulitzer.

A new book featuring more than fifty never-before-published images by this iconic photographer focusing exclusively on fashion called, SLIM AARONS: STYLE, has been published by Slim Aarons’ Archivist/Getty Images Curator Shawn Waldron and Fashion Writer Kate Betts, with foreword by Designer Jonathan Adler(Abrams; October 2021; U.S. $85.00; Hardcover). Slim Aarons insisted he was not a fashion photographer: “I didn’t do fashion. I did the people in their clothes that became the fashion.” Despite this, his photographs of high society and socialites being unambiguously themselves have been, and continue to be, an unwavering source of fashion and style inspiration for generations.

 

 

 

 

Most would not associate the name Suzie Zuzek with the iconic Slim Aarons photo, The Young Matrons of Palm Beach, however, at closer look, this photo is in fact a wonderful example of artist Zuzek’s work. Photo of Zuzek When Lilly Pulitzer’s simple shift dresses hit the fashion scene in the early 1960s, their eye-catching, whimsical prints made them instantly recognizable. Yet few people know that most of those prints were designed by Key West artist Suzie Zuzek (Agnes Helen Zuzek de Poo, American, 1920–2011). A Pratt Institute graduate (1949), Zuzek was head designer for Key West Hand Print Fabrics, where Pulitzer sourced most of her fabrics—and all of her prints—between 1962 and 1985, the period during which Pulitzer owned and oversaw the company that bears her name

 

Most would not associate the name Suzie Zuzek with the iconic Slim Aarons photo, The Young Matrons of Palm Beach, however, at closer look, this photo is in fact a wonderful example of artist Zuzek’s work When Lilly Pulitzer’s simple shift dresses hit the fashion scene in the early 1960s, their eye-catching, whimsical prints made them instantly recognizable. Yet few people know that most of those prints were designed by Key West artist Suzie Zuzek(Agnes Helen Zuzek de Poo, American, 1920–2011). A Pratt Institute graduate (1949), Zuzek was head designer for Key West Hand Print Fabrics, where Pulitzer sourced most of her fabrics—and all of her prints—between 1962 and 1985, the period during which Pulitzer owned and oversaw the company that bears her name.Photo of ExhibitionAn exhibition celebrating the designer behind these iconic prints, Suzie Zuzek for Lilly Pulitzer: The Prints That Made the Fashion Brand, is currently on view at The Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York, until January 2, 2022. It’s the first museum exhibition to reveal the nature and scope of Zuzek’s artistic contribution to the quintessential “Lilly Look”. Included in the exhibition are more than 35 original water color and gouache design drawings by Zuzek, alongside finished screen-printed textiles and some of the fashions that made them famous. The works on view include ten drawings recently acquired for the museum’s collection through a gift from the Key West Hand Print Fabrics archive, now privately owned. Zuzek Animal/Floral Print(©The Original I.P. LLC)Zuzek’s designs showcase her creative treatment of subjects ranging from mythical creatures to cosmology to the flora and fauna of Florida. Her palette was typically naturalistic, employing both the brilliant hues of the tropical flowers and the subtle browns, ochres, and grays used in her renderings of animals. When used as fabrics for the the Pulitzer collections, Zuzek’s designs were printed in the bright, vivid colors for which the brand is famous. The exhibition demonstrates the process of translating an artist’s rendering to fabric, and ultimately fashion, through silkscreen printing.