Paris Has a Brutal(ist) Side

Love it or hate it, brutalist architecture has an unavoidable presence in every major metropolis– even Paris. In fact, the French capital is something of a haven for futurist concrete architecture. Brutalist boomed here during the 60s and 70s in response to Modernism’s utopian vision, and after Haussmann, came superstar architects like Le Corbusier and an…

Vintage Japanese Advertising Could Sell Us Anything

The foamiest men’s shampoo to make bath-time oodles more fun? The latest must-have make-up for your back? Whatever they were selling, we would’ve been buying. If you were in post-WWII Japan, your eyeballs had the luck of watching the advertising world grow brighter, hipper, and (especially in the ’80s) weirder. From the surreal visuals and zany…

The Music Your Plants Are Making in Secret

Think twice the next time you pluck a daisy from the sidewalk, because that flower may actually be ‘screaming’ in a language you don’t understand— or at least, not yet. Today, we’re cracking the code of the fascinating world of plant sentience, a.k.a., the secret way in which everything from your Ikea houseplant to a…

What Happened to the Other Muses of Andy Warhol?

“One person in the ’60s fascinated me more than anybody I had ever known,” wrote Andy Warhol in his 1977 autobiography, From A to B and Back Again, “And the fascination I experienced was probably very close to a certain kind of love.” He never gets more explicit, preferring instead to steep in that infamous brand of Warholian…

Invasion of the Kitschy Carpets

Don’t worry, you’re not tripping. Give your eyes another rub, and you’ll realise you’re just being momentarily hypnotised by the felted creations of Makoto Egashira, the Japanese artist with a Midas touch. Only, swap the gold for your granny’s gaudy carpeting. From pineapples, to rocking chairs, teacups, even entire bathrooms and groups of people — nothing…

So the Real Hobbits Vacation in Sweden

In a hole in the ground, there lived a seriously pampered Swedish Hobbit. He had a private sauna, and a nearby manor retreat; a charming staff to make him a charcoal-fired pancakes and take him on moose safaris. For the right price, you too live like a glamping Hobbit. Welcome, friends, to the Kolarbyn eco-lodges: the…

How an Untrained Architect Made Oklahoma the Capital of Kitsch

Meet the latest maverick of the architecture world to steal our hearts, Bruce Goff. Lesser known amongst design laity, but just as groundbreaking as his fellow Midwesterner and mentor, Frank Lloyd Wright, Goff’s work was quite simply jaw-dropping. Case in point? The domed, technicolour house above. It might look like a groovy LA pad from the 1970s,…

Don’t Mess With the Jiu-jitsu Suffragettes

It’s Edwardian Era Glasgow, circa 1914, and the stress mounting in St. Andrews’s Hall is unbearable. Flocks of Suffragettes and policemen are waiting for the woman of the hour, Emmeline Pankhurst, to magically surface and fight against her own arrest — the tension is so palpable, you could cut it with a knife. Or karate-chop…

One Last Shopping Spree at a New York Icon of Fashion

For 123 years, Camelot was on 5th Avenue, otherwise known as the Henri Bendel department store, the place to be for any fashionable woman worth her salt in 20th century America. So when the timeless Manhattan mainstay announced its imminent, forever closure this month, we kind of lost it. Needed a hat that looked like a…

This 1950s French Lingerie Show will Make You Blush

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDs5xYsk3Qk&has_verified=1 We fell into yet another rabbit hole today when we stumbled upon a scene from the 1954 film, Ah! Les Belles Bacchantes. It was marketed as the very first French burlesque film starring “the 100 most beautiful French women,” and one of the greatest French slapstick comedians of all time. Above all it oozed sex appeal,…