As a personal assistant to a well-to-do retiree, Nora Szigeti is tasked with much of the usual fare: managing a calendar, booking travel, running errands. But after her 70-year-old boss recently came across an Instagram post shared by the account Class of Palm Beach, which documents outfits people have worn around that wealthy town, she took on another duty: publicist.
“My boss would be a perfect person for your site,” Ms. Szigeti, 50, recalled writing in a message to the account in November. Soon after, her employer, Oblio Wish, appeared in a video shared by Class of Palm Beach, in which she showed off her wardrobe full of items from Dior, Gucci and Chanel.
She is one of the hundreds of Palm Beach residents and visitors — whose ages have ranged from 20-something to 80-something — who have been featured on Class of Palm Beach’s Instagram, TikTok and Facebook accounts since they were started last March. Its accounts on those three platforms now have a combined audience of more than one million followers.
On the 14-mile-long island, Class of Palm Beach functions for some as a sort of social-media-age Shiny Sheet, a nickname for the Palm Beach Daily News, a paper that fills its pages with photographs from society galas and luncheons.
For others, like Ms. Szigeti, its accounts offer a near-daily glimpse into how the ultrarich dress. (A report from the U.S. Census Bureau listed the median household income in Palm Beach between 2018 and 2022 as $190,824.) Brunello Cucinelli, Zimmermann, and Hermès are names often uttered by people featured on the Class of Palm Beach accounts, many of whom can be seen clutching Chanel bags.
