On Not Having to Prove Anything
The Most Alluring Quality That Money Alone Cannot Buy
There is a type of image that always sticks in my mind.
Imagine a group from the effortless mid-century jet set.
Having a simple lunch — one that is not so simple when you consider the wine, the food spread across the table. Seeing their style. Their gesture. Beyond the leisurely activities and the aesthetic — which you can absorb through the photographs of Slim Aarons, and which may seem a little extravagant, even hedonistic at points — here lies the undeniable virtue: Effortless charm.
As Aarons himself stated, his philosophy was to photograph:
“Attractive people, Doing Attractive Things, in Attractive Places.”
So — what makes the people in Aarons’s images seem so attractive with the least apparent effort possible?
When you consider the idea of attractiveness in the current day, most of what you can see revolves around money and physical attractiveness. Sure — they are concrete assets that certainly elevate one’s status within the social echelon.
But here is the issue.
There are plenty of well-fit, well-groomed men — wearing shirts from Zegna, trousers from Loewe, with an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak on their wrist and perhaps Loro Piana Summer Walks on their feet — but who lack the charm and the aura of attractiveness that the old-world leisure class of the twentieth century possessed.
And, ladies and gentlemen, my intention here is far from romanticising the elite and privileged lifestyle of the few who lived as if superior to others.
No — far from it.
What matters is the larger question:
What really makes someone so attractive in the effortless manner?
If money, luxury objects, and physical optimisation for the algorithmic era are not the answer — and if the answer somehow lies within the aristocrats and socialites Aarons captured — then there must be something beyond the superficial asset.
Something that perhaps lies in the older idea of character cultivation — and in the inner qualities that money alone cannot afford to acquire.
