The Photographers Who Documented the Birth of Street Style

And so ends the seasonal Olympics for street style photographers in Paris! Also known as Fashion Week, it’s the time of year when these professional people-watchers jump through hoops to capture the hottest outfits of the City of Light, taking their cues from legends such as the Sartorialist and Bill Cunningham. But the real three fathers…

The Couple that Wanders the Globe in Search of an Undiscovered Feast

February is the antsiest time of year. It’s the long, cold stretch between the holiday season and warm weather with Valentine’s Day as a half-hearted consellation. Around this time, I usually find myself staring distractedly out windows at the grey Parisian sky so often it becomes a hobby. Not this year! This year, I’m starting at the…

Meet Slavik, the Homeless Ukranian Fashion Icon

As men’s Fashion Week is upon us and once again the fashion capitals fill up with the well-dressed elite, I would like to remind everyone that style isn’t synonymous with snobbery by introducing you to a homeless man so creative, the whole world is his runway. Meet Slavik, Ukraine’s most fashionable citizen. He once wandered around the city…

Who Knew Bill Cunningham Made Haute Couture Hats?

“Who the hell is that tourist in the blue jacket with the fancy camera?” I wondered. It was my first Fashion Week experience: I was shadowing photographer Eddie Newton, holding up a reflector as he shot passing fashionistas outside of the Chloé show. While the hoards were running left to capture Anna Wintour, then right to catch Kanye West,…

The Hidden Mothers of the Victorian Era

It’s a tall order to take a nice picture of a screaming baby even with Photoshop, so how are there so many vintage photos of well-behaved children at a time when it took up to 30 seconds for a camera to take a single picture? The clue is in the furnishings. That’s no ordinary pattered armchair–…

Welcome to Halloweentown, USA

“I think I saw the Head Witch of Salem in Trader Joe’s today,” I remember my mother saying. “She was wearing a pointy hat and cape in front of me at the checkout.” Welcome to Salem, Massachusetts, home of the infamous witch trails, the stomping grounds of Puritans and the headquarters of Halloween. One of the regulars was a…

The Veteran Chanel Window Dresser who opened the Oddest Little Art Gallery in Paris

I once read somewhere that if you were to spend eight seconds in front of every piece of artwork in the Louvre’s collection it would take one year to see everything. I believe the same rule holds true for Station Arret Facultatif. It’s as if a tornado swept through Paris and dumped the best of the…

Unmasking the Parisian Phantom of the Opera

What if I told you there is a lake under the Paris Opera House, just like in The Phantom of the Opera? Down, down, down, deep underneath the Garnier Opera in a dingy room with a square-shaped hole in the middle, I found it. Resting in the hole was a ladder that seemed to be descending into…

Shakespeare, Jazz and Summer Nights Under the Oldest Tree in Paris

Last weekend, four American tourists were attacked in Paris by a raving madman with an invisible dagger. As the long line of visitors swelled in the heat at the legendary bookstore Shakespeare & Company, no one seemed to notice a customer in the queue curiously dressed as an old-fashioned WWI soldier… He soon caught everyone’s…

The French Cliff carved into Legends of Old by One Mute Abbot

Finding shapes in the clouds, strange noises in your house at night from the monster under the bed, the Virgin Mary appearing on a piece of toast; some things aren’t always as they seem– like the cliffs on the coast of Brittany near Saint-Malo. There’s this one that looks like it has a bunch of faces carved…