15 49.0138 8.38624 both 0 bullet 0 4000 1 0 horizontal https://www.messynessychic.com 300 4000

Category / Editor’s Picks

The Lost Victorian Mansions of Downtown LA

This is a picture of a Los Angeles that no longer exists. Affectionately knick-named “the Castle”, this elegant Victorian house was one of many in the once prestigious neighbourhood of Los Angeles, known as Bunker Hill. Downtown LA does have history, it’s just buried under gleaming high-rise office blocks and strip malls… Despite once attracting…

The Greatest Open Air (and floating) Show on Earth

Our return to the world of theatre can’t come soon enough, but there is one stage in particular that should be right up there on your bucket list. The Bregenz Festival is home to the world’s largest floating stage, built in epic proportions since 1946 on Lake Constance in Austria. If you’re not a fan of…

When Cats, Peaches, Lunch (and Letters) were Mailed Beneath the Streets of NYC

For over 50 years, a 27-mile network of pneumatic tubes provided upwards of a third of New York City’s mail. Nowadays, speed is the name of the game, whether its technology constantly increasing the speed of digital communication or Amazon delivering goods at record rates. But 100 years ago, pneumatic tubes, basically 19th-century physical internets,…

The Party Castle Forgotten in the Jungle for Half a Century

There are some places in the world that make you weak at the knees with nostalgia and Paronella Castle is one of them. It was the impossible dream of an ambitious Spanish immigrant who sailed to Australia in 1913 to make a life for himself and his fiancé waiting back home. José Paronella worked for…

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

1. Fran Lebowitz & Iman for French Vogue, 1983 Photographed by Antony Armstrong Jones and styled by Andre Leon Talley. Found on Tumblr. 2. Russia’s Lost crown jewels of the Imperial Family Collected during the Romanov dynasty, beginning with the reign of Peter the Great, personally owned by members of the extended Romanov family and by…

Korean Cowboys of the Old World

Wisemen, dapper dudes, cowboys of the far east– I’m not really sure what to call them, I just know I’ve been charmed by these old world photographs of Korean style captured by visiting foreigners before the country was torn in half. It all started with this photograph from the Cornell University Library, of a Korean boatman…

Curiosity du Jour: Antique Intaglio Seals

When we stopped writing letters, it wasn’t just our penmanship that went down the toilet, but the entire art of letter-writing, and all the romance and ceremony that came with it. Arguably the loveliest victim to have disappeared from our desks in the wake of its decline? The intaglio seal. Intaglio seals, essentially engraved gems,…

Hollywood’s Beguiling Queen of Pre-Code Cinema

If Norma Shearer doesn’t ring a bell like other legendary names of the silver screen might, then you too, have fallen victim to the Hays Code. Before we even knew it as “Hollywood”, the American film industry was producing a surreal amount of extraordinarily liberal and racy movies dominated by strong unapologetic female characters, homosexual…

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

1. Found in a French mansion in that was shuttered for a century A late 19th-century French mansion shuttered for more than a century has opened its doors to the public, revealing an array of outdated luxuries and oddities. The house once belonged to the wealthy, philanthropic, and “egocentric” civil servant Louis Mantin… who died…

Little Tuscany in the Heart of Paris

As if plucked from a 17th century Mediterranean estate waiting to transport Parisians to the hills of Florence; tucked away in a corner of Paris’ Luxembourg gardens is one of the city’s most underrated beauty spots. The Medici Fountain, crowned with an Italian grotto and flanked by ivy drapes, is an impossibly romantic place alluding…

NEWER POSTS 1 … 73 74 75 … 190 OLDER POSTS