Inside New York’s Greatest, Liveable Cabinet of Curiosities

Paige Stevenson doesn’t quite live in the same world as the rest of us. “People talk a lot about what it means to make art,” she says on the foggy Sunday morning when we visit her home, while biscuits warm in the oven, “I just think, why not live it? People get so caught up…

The Groundbreaking Kitsch Cowboy Art of George Quaintance

You just can’t outshine George Quaintance. Literally. Take one look at the glistening bodybuilders from his kitsch, homoerotic oeuvre, and you’d think you were looking some 1986 romance novels, but nope. These babies date back to the 1940s-50s, to an era before the queer advocacy following the AIDS crisis, and before the sexual revolution. And…

America’s Underground Sin City

There’s the Wild West, and then there’s it’s even wilder underbelly. For locals of Hill County, Montana, that underbelly hides in the subterranean village of Havre, whose passages once bustled with saloons and opium dens, bordellos and mercantile shops galore. For decades, it was on the brink of crumbling away in silence. Now, it’s finally…

The Hair That Launched a Thousand Tweets

Stop what you’re doing, and take a seat, because senator Valentina Petrenko’s hair is about to sweep you off your feet with its gravity-defying fabulousness. This Russian politician has been captivating the internet recently with her truly one-of-a-kind look, becoming quite the Twitter starlet, and leaving folks bewildered as to how she manages to keep it all…

Vintage Muse du Jour: Princess Elizabeth of Toro

Today, we’re formally inviting you to shift your gaze to a lesser-known royal, deserving of her own spotlight: Elizabeth of Toro, the Ugandan Princess, lawyer, actor, top model, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Ambassador to the US, Germany and the Vatican in the 1960s. Her life reads like a trophy wall, and that’s only half…

You’re Invited to the Executioner Island Slumber Party

Look carefully at the heart of the Long Island Sound in the night, and you’ll see it: a flashing white light, piercing the fog every ten seconds or so to steer boats away from the deadly shores of Execution Rocks. These are the icy waters where the British drowned their prisoners during the revolutionary war,…

The Many Odd Jobs of Andy Warhol

Ask any full-time creative exactly where they find inspiration, or what their line of work even is, and they’ll tell you of all the jobs they’ve juggled not only to pay the rent, but stay relevant. And with history as our witness, Warhol was pretty damn good at that (as well as keeping a few…

Vintage Muse du Jour: Mina Mazzini

What happens when you put two tons of glitter, a killer voice, and a dash of Surrealism into a blender? You get “the Queen of Screamers”, Italian songstress Mina Mazzini. She was the reigning bad girl of Italy’s airwaves in the 1960s and ’70s, raising everyone’s eyebrows but her own–which she shaved off, naturally– and…

The Vault

A Guide to the Secret Bee Villages of NYC

As fate would have it, some of the dreamiest real estate in New York City is also its tiniest. From Bryant Park to the gardens of one of Manhattan’s grandest cathedrals, the beekeeping villages of America’s premier metropolis aren’t always where you’d expect, and it can take a keen eye to spot them amongst the skyscrapers…

Pssst! You've stumbled across content that is exclusive to Nessy's Keyholders.

There’s a new way to access the really special stuff from Messy Nessy Chic …

Hidden beneath the surface layers of the internet, there’s a place where we keep our most secret addresses, untapped archives, creator’s inspiration, collector’s guides, explorer’s manuals, obscure research and much more… And it’s made for our keyholders only!

Apply now to unlock the Vault

Keyholder Login

Lost Fetish Files of Mid-Century S&M

Note: this article includes some sexually explicit and graphic content. There’s something especially spicy about mid-century, femme-dominant S&M — and that’s saying something, considering Sadomasochism has been shaking things up in the bedroom since (roughly) 1785, when the French philosopher Le Marquis de Sade first published his erotic fantasy novel, Les 120 Journées de Sodome (The…