The Whiskered Odyssey of Body Hair and Hairless Bodies

Plucking, shaving, waxing, epilating, threading, lasering – whatever preference one has for grooming body hair, we can probably all agree that most of the time, it would be easier if we didn’t have to do it all. And for a good part of Western civilization, underarm, leg, and pubic hair were simply expected parts of…

The Hushed History of Sex Workers on the Battlefield

Sex and war are seemingly the uneasiest of bedfellows, nonetheless, they’ve have had a most intense relationship over centuries of conflict. As early as the Third Crusade, Philip II of France, horrified with the rampant rape and sodomy in his armies, instructed boatloads of “girls of joy” to be dispatched from France to “re-focus” his…

Fashion’s Forgotten Bébé

Fabulous, free and fashionable, France bloomed in the 1930s. The avant-garde arts flourished, Paris was at the centre of it all and her output was bountiful. The creative giants of the day, Picasso, Cocteau, Coco Chanel, May Ray, Beauvoir and Sartre, the Lost Generation and their cultural circle basked in a warm summer evening’s glow…

The Fashion Anatomy of Spandau Ballet

The swashbuckling frilly shirts, waist-cinching belts, man brooches, contouring make-up, jodhpurs and jack boots – was Spandau Ballet the most underrated fashion statement of the 80s? Outside of Britain (and the 1980s) the obscurely-named band might stand in the shadows of their rivals Duran Duran, but here’s why Spandau Ballet deserves a far more significant…

Once upon a time in Detroit’s ‘Little Paris of the Midwest’

You shall go to the Ball! The Belle Époque was that party at the end of the 19th century when European influence, wealth, culture and glamour reigned supreme. All wanted to join the party, and Detroit, that French Trading post on the North American lakes, was up for it. Prosperous and progressive from its new…

The World’s First Sex Therapist and his Temple of Hymen

Self-styled Scottish ‘doctor’ James Graham may not have been the original snake oil salesman but he wasn’t far from it. The ultimate eccentric showman who spotted innumerable untapped business opportunities in the sex industry, James Graham gleefully administered a cocktail of somewhat questionable, shall we say, ‘fertility treatments’ to his well-to-do aristocratic patients, who were…

A Brief Cultural History of Sun Tanning

When a lithe ‘It-Girl’ Coco Chanel stepped off a yacht in Cannes with an accidental suntan in 1923, many would argue it was the moment that sunbathing became a cultural phenomenon. Porcelain-skinned flappers everywhere were intrigued by this rebellious new suntanned look sported by the Parisian designer; one that for centuries had been associated with…

Her Apprenticeship with Le Corbusier Didn’t Go Quite as He Expected

“We don’t embroider cushions here,” said the man considered as the most important architect of the modern age, during his first encounter with Charlotte Perriand. She wanted to work for Le Corbusier, a name synonymous with those dramatically new brutal concrete buildings, rejecting the past, promising a utopian future. He would take some convincing to hire Perriand,…

On Dating David Bowie in the Seventies

From a distant galaxy, far, far away, Ziggy Stardust made his last public appearance in 1973 before David Bowie retired the glamrock persona and sent him packing for good. But the infamous last hurrah in London would also his first public collaboration with another equally unique being who would go on to make a profound…

Is this History’s Most Underrated Dress?

A couturier-friend of mine once wryly remarked (as she meticulously contemplated the exact landing spot of another rose-gold sequin destined for the bust of a ballgown) that her life effectively was a fashionable road-map signposted by all the memorable gowns she’s made for brides, debutantes and society ladies over the decades. Similarly we fashionistas and…