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Category / Editor’s Picks

Instagram’s Most Adventurous Naked Hippie

I think this is the shot that got me hooked on the Magdalena experience. Yup. It’s got everything I could ever need in an Instagram photo: abandoned building; check, ghost town; check, vintage typography, old neon sign, female body confidence and serious wanderlust vibes; check. It was taken in Rico, Colorado, a historic silver mining town in the Pioneer Mining District, which has…

The Girl behind the Wallpaper

You definitely know her face, but do you know her story, her name, or that she even did actually exist? Her repeated face is the muse behind one of the most recognisable prints in interior design; Piero Fornasetti’s eccentric plate series ‘Tema e Variazioni’, which over the years became a decorator’s go-to wallpaper or accessory for achieving a quirky and…

The Mad, Mad Love of Man Ray & Lee Miller

She was the model and artist turned war correspondent. He was one of Surrealism’s most iconic figures. Together, Lee Miller and Man Ray lived a fiery romance, set to the backdrop of 1930s Paris. So naturally, we’re keen to relive their story… Miller was discovered by Condé Montrose Naste (yes, that Condé Naste) at 19 in…

Summering with the Surrealists: Sea, Sex and Sun

Let us rewind to the sizzling summers of 1936 and ‘37 to holiday on the French Riviera with Pablo Picasso and his international ensemble of friends at the Hotel Vaste Horizon, a modest boarding house nestled in the old town of Mougins. The warren of intimate rooms and courtyards would be the summer home to…

How One Frenchman Became the World’s Most Beloved Lesbian Poet

We thought we’d heard it all when it came to imposters. Clearly, we hadn’t met Pierre Louÿs. The French writer had Europe’s literary scene eating out of the palm of his hand, and was decorated as a Chevalier and Officier de la Légion d’honneur in his lifetime, two of his country’s highest honours, that would never have been awarded…

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…

Mona (Marilyn) Monroe, the $10-an-Hour Pin-Up Model

In 1946, a nineteen year-old aspiring actress in Hollywood was in need of a job, and fast. Born Norma Jean Dougherty, destined to become Marilyn Monroe, but in between, for those not-so-squeaky-clean modelling jobs, she preferred to go by Mona– with a going rate of $10 an hour. It’s often thought that the first nude modelling Monroe did was…

All Aboard the Incredible Flying Yacht, circa 1950

They don’t call it the ‘Golden Age of Travel’ for nothing. If you thought you were having early symptoms of the pre-summer travel bug, this will surely finish you off. Found deep within LIFE magazine’s archives, introducing “the flying yacht” … Hold the phone! A flying yacht in 1950?! Or an amphibious airplane, depending on…

Cinema’s First Sex Symbol was also America’s First Goth

From Mae West to Eva Green, the cinema archetype of the ‘femme fatale’ has fascinated and frightened audiences since Hollywood’s golden age. But nearly a century before Sharon Stone bore all as the deadly seductress Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct, silent-film actress Theda Bara, the silver screen’s very first sex symbol, hypnotized filmgoers with her…

Electro Queens and Digital Divas who Pioneered Electronic Music

There isn’t one clear inventor of electronic music, although if you start looking, you’ll find that an overwhelming number of early pioneers who shaped its history were women. On both a technical and creative level, women have and continue to revolutionalize electronic music. As the genre developed throughout the 20th century, a hidden wave of…

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