The Bric-a-Brac Palaces of France

Forget the Eiffel Tower, Versailles and the Chartres Cathedral, I’ve got some alternative French attractions to see… La Maison Picassiete- “The House of the Plate Stealer” Built entirely by one man, it took Raymonde Isidore more than 25 years to complete his impressive Maison Picassiette. In 1936, the middle-aged Frenchman began covering his house located…

HistoryPin: An Online Time Machine

As if Google Street View wasn’t already cool enough, allowing you to virtually be in two places at once, there’s a new website in town that’s translocating you one step further– into history! You’ve probably looked up your street or your house on Google Street View already, right? What if you could also compare…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. XI)

1. Possibly the Coolest Swimming Pool in the World Once a quarry in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, the deeper part of the pool’s stairs, which once served as an access road for vehicles to enter and exit the quarry, were overlaid with gunite to create an easy entrance to the pool and to close off…

Horse Meat, Sexual Favors & North Korean Style: Paris Fashion Week

Another season, another Paris Fashion Week! Nessy and her pal Kath couldn’t resist getting in on the action, so off we went to ask some fashionistas more of those hard-hitting questions… Here it is, a brand new episode of Fashion for Dummies 101 at Paris Fashion Week: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cy3NGnffgY] ::: YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: .

Hepburn in 1960s Paris

The other night I tucked myself up in bed and watched Funny Face, the 1957 Gershwin musical starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire. New-York fashion photographer, played by Astaire, sets out to find a “new face” for the high fashion magazine Quality and soon enough discovers Audrey Hepburn working as a bookstore clerk in Greenwich village,…

A Guide to Dealing with Negative Comments from Internet Trolls

Although so many of you wonderful readers leave amazing and encouraging comments on this space, occasionally there’s someone out there that leaves a negative one and it seems to have the power to grab my attention more than any other comment and consume and torment my soul … or at least bug me for a…

Alberobello: Staying in an Italian Hobbit Town

The Vatican, the leaning Tower of Pisa, the canals of Venice, Pompeii– you might think you’ve seen all Italy has to offer already, but have you heard about the town built with a style of architecture so old, it predates written Italian history? Welcome to Alberobello, a small town with 11,000 inhabitants in Puglia (in…

The Rotting Rothschild Mansion in Paris

The Rothschilds are known as one of the greatest European banking dynasties ever established, amassing the largest private fortune in modern history. The family is less well-known for anything to do with squalor, ruin or decay. But just 5 miles from the Notre-Dame, beyond the lush green lawn of the Edmond de Rothschild park, standing defiantly behind a thick wall of…

American Cowgirls of the 1940s

This post is pretty much the result of me getting lost in the LIFE magazine archives again and coming across a bunch of mostly unpublished photographs of cowgirls that were too good not to share. These snaps are a melange of photo stories by LIFE photographers, Nina Leen, Peter Stackpole and Cornell Capa between 1947-48 at the…

Women Wear High Heels Because We Are Idiots, Says History

High heels were not originally intended to be worn by women. In fact, the coveted red-soled Christian Louboutin shoes were famously inspired by a French royal and notable trendsetter of the high heel, King Louis XIV of France. He passed a law ensuring only members of his court could wear the red-soled heels he sported, making it…