Nick Mele grew up at the epicenter of the Gilded Age universe: Newport, Rhode Island. “My world was full of these really kind of amazing older women,” the photographer, who has been called a modern-day Slim Aarons, says. “I’d watch them live their lives and decorate their homes within the ways that they grew up and the things that they were taught,” he remembers. “I wanted to capture that world, this way of life that I knew, that I felt was starting to disappear.”
In the decades since, Mele has made chronicling the eccentricities of old-world glamour his signature. He’s staged scenes of polo ponies at the breakfast table and Birkins at lemonade sales. Most recently, he turned his lens on one of New York’s most beloved institutions: Bergdorf Goodman. Titled Bergdorf’s 125: A New York Affair, the 24-print exhibition celebrates the store’s 125th anniversary and will be on view beginning November 1 on the seventh floor (best known as the home of the bridal and Christmas departments),
Mele began his research by treasure-hunting in the department store’s Long Island prop warehouses, where decorations for the surreal and beloved holiday windows are kept. “It’s not as meticulously organize...