Images by Gray Malin
Growing up in Dallas, I didn’t come from a family that did big, elaborate trips. It was through my grandparents that I became truly intrigued by the idea of seeing the world. They visited over 100 countries together and kept these beautiful photo albums of all their trips during the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s.
All of those albums are still at our family’s summer home on Lake Michigan. We don’t have a television there—it’s a place where you play games, go to the beach, have dinner together—so I spent a lot of time as a kid looking through these amazing photographs of their travels. My aesthetic as a photographer is inspired in part by those vintage snapshots of their life.
My first real taste of travel was studying abroad in college, when I lived two hours outside of Amsterdam in a 14th-century castle with two moats. That experience helped shape the creative journey that followed, one that fatefully led me on a helicopter ride above Miami in 2011. I discovered the beauty of the beach from above and spent the next year traveling all over the world to continue adding to the exciting portfolio of aerial beach photography that began on that helicopter.
One of my high school friends has had a family house in Aspen for years, so at one point I called and told her about this idea I had to photograph skiers dotting the snow the same way I was photographing sunbathers, umbrellas, and chaise lounges dotting the sand. She invited me to stay with her, and we flew out on a helicopter during that very busy time between Christmas and New Year’s. After all my work in beach destinations, I didn’t quite realize how cold it would be on that door-less flight! That’s when I shot my first-ever aerial photograph over the snowy tundra below.
This was before people were using drones, so back then, photos like that were unprecedented. I still shoot that way—from a helicopter, not with a drone. I’m obsessed with the artistry and adventure of creating compositions up in the air. No one can really tell when the photos were taken because you’re viewing the scene from so far above. They’re timeless.
I didn’t anticipate how much people were going to love those images, or that I would end up falling in love with Aspen. One day I hope to own a home here. That’s how much I love this place. The one trip I took in all of 2020 was a weekend in Aspen during peak fall foliage. I needed an escape from Los Angeles, where I live with my husband and twins. We’re hoping to bring them out for their first ski lessons this winter.
At the time of that trip, I had just designed Cabana One for The Beverly Hills Hotel—a whimsical poolside cabana designed to make guests feel like they’re stepping inside a Gray Malin photograph. I wondered if we could bring an experiential concept like Cabana One to guests of The Little Nell.
I’d worked with The Little Nell a few years prior, after Aspen Skiing Company and I connected over doing a throwback winter photoshoot to celebrate The Little Nell’s 30th anniversary. I got to work with an incredible archive of vintage ski clothes from a collector who lives downvalley in Carbondale. The photos still hang in the Sundeck.
I started studying my aerial photographs of beach and ski clubs and thought, what if we brought the beach to the top of the ski mountain, giving people an out-of-this-world setting to take their own photographs, make their own Gray Malin moment? In collaboration with ASPENX, we created a signature experience called Snow Beach, building a beach club in the snow at 11,000 feet and supplying it with amazing extras like Champagne and caviar from The Little Nell. This year is going to be even bigger and better, with new additions and a new name, ASPENX Beach Club.
What makes hotels iconic is their location. The Little Nell is one of a kind in Aspen, with a special sense of place that comes from being right at the base of the mountain under the gondola. It was a dream come true to see this wild scheme come to life at the top of Ajax in 2022. I designed the visual identity of the experience, from the furniture to the layout to the color palette. To see Snow Beach go from paper and pencil to reality, and to witness guests enjoying it so much, was unbelievable. I’ll forever be proud of it.