The American Marie Antoinette of Pre-War Paris

Her private villa in Versailles hosted the last great Parisian party before the storm of World War II, attended by Coco Chanel, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and the Rothschilds. Paris fashion experts named her the best-dressed woman in the world and her eye for design catapulted her to the higher echelons of Parisian…

Stop Everything and Check Out these Miniature Book Houses

So here’s something that absolutely needs a place in my cabinet of curiosities– book houses! Real books, “hollowed-out” and filled with a miniature vignette setting, complete with tiny scaled wallpaper and parquet flooring. They come from a little-known artist I found in the far corners of the net, Shannon Moore, who has been working with…

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The Woman who staged a Private Revolution from her Photo Studio

For decades after her death, Marie Høeg’s secrets remained hidden, until the 1980s, when a box of 440 glass plate negatives marked “private” was found inside a disused barn in Oslo, Norway. The discovery revealed the near-forgotten rebellion of a group of women and friends experimenting with gender in an era of strict conventions surrounding sexuality…

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The Secret Rooftop Views of Paris

This guy is definitely not insured for his line of work. There aren’t many Parisians that need to wear hiking shoes to work, but for Alain Cornu, when the sun fades behind the rooftops, the photographer packs up his gear, puts on his boots and heads to the nearest ladder that will lead him to…

One Very Surreal Day with Salvador Dalì

Even today, in this era of “nothing shocks us anymore”, Dalì still manages to get an eyebrow raise out of me. The man is endlessly fascinating and just when I think I’ve seen all his work, up pops another thing I never knew he did. Just this morning, I found a clip of a dream…

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

1. A meteorologist who has spent the past 30 years living alone at a remote Arctic outpost Vyacheslav Korotki, lives on the barents sea, in a century old wooden house that became a meteorological station in 1933, where he was sent by the russian state to measure and log climatic conditions and then transmit the…

House Hunting for the Ultimate Hideout

If you had the choice to plant your flag anywhere you wanted– would you choose to be stay with the pack or venture off on your own? I often wonder about people who live out in the middle of nowhere, isolated from the rest of the world. Did they choose this life? Are they truly…

A Paris Movie with Messy Nessy

Et voilà. Oh boy. This is happening. Messy Nessy is officially making the leap into the realm of video. It’s been months in the making and it’s with slightly sweaty palms that I present to you the very first episode of our new web series, “Don’t be a Tourist in Paris”. Come hang out with me…

They Just don’t Make Vacations like they Used To

This is just one of those posts that started with a single photograph which gave me such nostalgia for an era I’ve never actually lived through, that I proceeded to compile my own imaginary photo album of the perfect 1950s vacation– all shot in 35mm kodachrome of course. It was this tiny vacation cottage that…

Stop Everything and Check out this Perfectly Wes Anderson Parisian Apartment

I could see a Margaux Tenenbaum living here on her family-funded sabbatical in Paris, couldn’t you? In fact, I would encourage Mr. Anderson to consider this Parisian apartment that just hit to market, for a Francophile sequel to The Royal Tenenbaums. You may or may not be aware, that when the director is not off…