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Category / Editor’s Picks

Jane Avril, “The Strange” Poster Child of the Moulin Rouge

If you knew that “Satine”, Baz Luhrmann’s lead character in his 2001 movie musical Moulin Rouge! was in fact based on a real-life French can-can dancer called Jane Avril, the decision to cast Nicole Kidman might make even more sense. Avril, with her flaming red hair, thin lips and delicate facial features, tall gaunt physique…

Rosa Bonheur’s Chateau is a Time Capsule Waiting to be Discovered

Rosa Bonheur was one of the most popular artists of the 19th Century. Not only was her work being sold and seen around the world, songs were composed about her and dolls were made in her image. Today, some of Paris’ most thriving bars and nightclubs are named after her. But her artistic merit has…

Haute Couture? The Tudors Did it First

Just look at the details on that dress. Seriously, zoom in! Fashion trends have always been cyclical, and the latest inspiration may be coming from the ‘90s, the 1590s that is. The Tutor period marked not only a time of economic prosperity but also developments in the arts, notably in fashion and textiles. The French…

American Vacations of the 1900s in Color

Tourism just ain’t what it used to be. I stumbled upon this incredible archive of tinted photochromes from the dawn of the 19th century hiding away in the Beinecke rare books and manuscript library. Published by the Detroit Photographic (which no longer exists), the firm’s photographers travelled the country snapping the sights of North America to be…

The Forgotten Glamour of Vacationing in Vittel

In a scorching Parisian heat wave, all one wants to do is chug a bottle of Vittel while hugging another cold one for brief relief. While the iconic water brand sells over a billion bottles a year worldwide today, lesser-known is the Belle Epoque spa town where over a century ago, socialites once gathered on vacation to benefit from both…

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

1. A Prolific Female Pioneer Photographer Lora Webb Nichols left behind 24,000 images, 65 years of diaries (plus an unfinished memoir) providing “an intimate window into life on the Wyoming frontier in the early 20th century”, where she had lived up on a homestead since the late 1800s. Spanning from 1899 to the 1950s, “her…

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

“Women are like teabags. We don’t know our true strength until we are in hot water.” – Eleanor Roosevelt Today’s 13 Things is dedicated to women. 1. Tradeswomen, magazine for blue collar workingwomen in the ‘80s & ’90s it became an integral tool for organizing in a landscape of sexist gatekeeping. See the full article…

When in Rome, Discover Hollywood on the Tiber

Italian cinema is synonymous with hauntingly special silver screen moments, the stuff that flashbulb memories are made of. Who could possibly forget the larger than life screen goddess Anita Ekberg – all platinum locks, bare shoulders and curvaceous black dress in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita? Or the doe-eyed flamboyant gamine Audrey Hepburn on her…

The American Art Scene was a Man’s World, Until They Came Along

When Francoise Gilot split from Picasso, he prevented galleries from buying her work. Camille Claudel’s lover, Augustin Rodin, signed a number of her sculptures as his own, and after their romance ended badly, it’s rumored he told the Ministry of Fine Arts to stop commissioning her. If you walk through any museum, you’ll often see…

Here’s the American Dream looking pretty Hungover by the 1970s

I would have liked to see America during its in-between period– somewhere in the seventies when the whole “Stepford Wives” thing and censorship and social compliance was over with (more or less), but they hadn’t yet starting tearing down all those wonderful and whimsical buildings. Sure, they might have been looking a little sorry for…

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