She Put Bohemianism on New York’s Front Page

No magazine has a cover style as distinctive, enduring and charming as that of The New Yorker. With its unmistakably unique title font and with almost a century’s commitment to using original artwork on its front cover in every weekly edition since 1925, it’s arguably the most influential magazine ever when it comes to culture,…

The Strange, Unspoken Glorification of Sexual Assault in Art History

There’s something not quite right about that painting, wouldn’t you say? The many depictions of Leda and the Swan are hanging on the walls of some of the most prestigious museums and galleries across the world, and yet, there’s a conversation we’re not having. The Greek myth in which the Spartan queen Leda is seduced…

Cruising with Agatha Christie on the Last Steamship of the Nile

The passage up the Blue Nile has always been both a physical experience and an allegorical tale. Thousands of years after pharaohs were ferried to the afterlife on golden barges, the steamboat began transporting mesmerised 19th century tourists past their temples in search of something otherworldly. This graceful journey up the river, passing ancient pyramids and…

Art Nouveau’s Obsession with the Peacock

The sensational peacock first made landfall in Europe about twenty centuries ago when its sparkling, bedazzling image was captured in the glistening mosaic floors and walls of the Romans and Byzantines. Imported from their native India, they were anointed the holy birds of the goddess Juno and kept in her temple. Fast-forward to the 15th…

You’ve probably Never Heard of the Most Fascinating Woman of the Belle Epoque

Corsets could be blamed (among many things) for preventing a lot of women throughout history from living their best lives, but Camille du Gast was not one of them. She was a self-styled “exploratrice” with a mind of her own and a penchant for speed. If you weren’t familiar with any women pursuing race car…

How French Fashion Emerged even More Decadently from the Guillotine

Those of us who paid any attention in history class can probably recount a few key details and players of the French Revolution – there was Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI (AKA Louis the Last) and their posse at Versailles who were eating too much cake; the revolutionaries who kicked things off by storming the Bastille…

In Nazi-Occupied Paris, Swing Kids had their own Resistance Movement

They aren’t remembered for their political or intellectual outpourings, nor for their radical actions in the streets. The only weapons of the Zazou were dress, speech and attitude, and yet, this Parisian subculture somehow came to be a thorn in the side of Nazis and French Fascists. Throughout history, fashion has always been a reliable…

The Surrealist Magical Mystery of Leonora Carrington

On paper, she is Britain’s lost surrealist; an English debutante who cut herself off from her wealthy family, fell in love with Max Ernst and eloped with him to Paris, finding herself in the centre of surrealist movement. Separated from Ernst by war, she later ended up in Mexico, and became one of the country’s…

Seven Visionary Spaces Du Jour

The art and science of the enclosure of space is all around us, shelter-creation being traditionally its key function but oftentimes architecture is also a mouthpiece for broadcasting a message through carefully crafted iconography. So-called ‘alternative’ structures vary from intellectual triumphs of the unconventional to purely attention-seeking visual bubble gum. It’s often somewhere in the…

Before Cher Horowitz had her Computer Closet, Marie Antoinette had the Wardrobe Book

Ask any millennial with a heartbeat for fashion about the 90s cult-classic film, Clueless, and watch their eyes light up as they recall Cher Horowitz (played by Alicia Silverstone) and her “way normal” morning routine of mixing and matching pieces on her desktop computer to pick out an outfit for school from her revolving dream…