SlimAarons
Sports
The Sport and the Style
Aarons photographed many different sporting events, not only for the game, but also for the socializing that happened on and around the fields, courses, and courts-from tennis at Newport's Casino to rowing at Henley-on-Thames and cricket at London's Lord's Cricket Ground. Each event was opportunity for spectators to dress up and enjoy a picnic or a more formal luncheon. As such, they were ideal opportunities for Aarons to shoot style on location.
The players also had their own chic style. At Henley they wore brightly striped rowing jackets and smart straw hats; on the cricket fields they were dressed all in white. But the most stylishly influential sport was polo, which involved colorful polo shirts with bold stripes and maybe even a silk scarf.
- SPORTS -
The Sport of Kings
Aarons often traveled to Palm Beach, London, and even Argentina to photograph the matches, particularly the famous Eton vs. Harrow match in London. Here, Aarons captures six-time U.S. Open Championship winner Paul Butler with his family, one of the sport's foremost, in Palm Beach, 1981. Known as "the Sport of Kings," polo has been played for two thousand years. In London, the Indian game was originally revived by Lord Cowdray, a one-armed player who was a polo enthusiast and responsible for making it popular after the war. He turned his Cowdray Park into the locale of weekend matches and encouraged the Duke of Edinburgh to play there, in addition to his neighboring Windsor Great Park tournament. The opportunity to host members of Britain's Royal family was too good to be true: the Queen and Princess Margaret were known to attend matches during Royal Ascot Week.
Wearing top hats and tails, or tweedy knickers, the spectators on all of these events became inspiration to legions of Americans and designers-not least of whom was Ralph Lauren, who named his company after the sport, taking cues for his famous knit shirts from the polo players' uniforms, embroidered with the now-ubiquitous pony. The look became popular in American resorts like Palm Beach, where the world's finest players would convene during the winter season for sixteen weeks of matches at the International Polo Club.
