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

Category / Inspiration Vault

When Adverts were Artworks

We pay attention to advertising a lot more than we’d like to think. At the bus stop, in traffic and even right here on this very website, helping me to keep this thing chugging away. But I’d like to make a plea to all those ‘Mad Men’ agencies, print designers and graphic artists– would it be possible to pick…

For Sale! A 1960s New York Mets Baseball Car to Zip Around in this Summer

There is very little I know about the sport of baseball. What I do know however, is that we all need one of these giant baseball-shaped “bullpen” cars to run ourselves down to the beach this summer… “A fantastic example of whimsical Major League Baseball marketing from the late 1960s,” used intermittently for legendary World Series games at…

The Hidden Feast in a Barcelona Factory After Dark

We left the Barcelona night behind us, disappearing through a graffiti-covered door on a bustling back street of locals going about their downtown nocturnal hustle. All we have is this calling card with an address on the back as we wander down the austerely-lit corridor and take the first staircase, not entirely sure where it will…

And now, a Catalogue of Crazy Customized Coffins

Someone is selling this Airstream coffin on eBay for $4,500. It comes from Ghana where it was made in a workshop in 1995 by Nii Anum, a disciple of Kane Kwei, a carpenter born in the 1920s who made a name for himself making custom fantasy casket in his hometown of Accra. Kwei first began…

Ass-Whooping Women in Skirts in the 1930s

Just in time for the weekend (in case us damsels happen to lose our way down a dark alley), here’s some footage from British Pathé archives of a young woman in 1933 giving a real vintage ass-whooping using some Judo and Jujitsu moves. The video titled “The Weaker Sex! (Sayest Thou!) Who said “weaker sex?”, sees a highly entertaining Miss May…

Sleep inside a Designer’s Cabinet of Curiosities Boutique

Here’s how it usually works with me on the internet. I’ll stumble upon a single photograph of something that looks curious and intriguing and I’ll follow that image down the rabbit hole to the other end of the earth, literally. Today I came out the other end of the rabbit hole in Australia after finding a…

The Reindeer Riders

If the descendants of ancient legends truly exist among us today, these are they. Despite the odds, the nomads of Outer Mongolia are a people seemingly immune from degeneration, still living in such proximity to wild animals with a certain spiritual wisdom, sense of healing and well-being lost to our notions of time and laws…

Spotting Cute French Guys on the Paris Metro

I have a friend who used to leave her house for work at the exact same time everyday to make sure she caught the same train as her Paris metro crush. She never mustered the courage to speak to him and one day he just stopped taking the same train and she never saw him again. It…

The Secret Seventies Bar Hidden inside a Retro Laundromat Café

I‘m guessing every keyword in that title had you at hello. Secret, seventies, hidden, retro, laundromat café– yep, I like to think I’m starting to get a feel for the sort of things that float your boat. So let’s get straight to it and hop over to London for a moment to check out this spot I’ve been eyeballing every since it…

Disappear inside the Secret “Sinners” Cave Temple

If you’re in need of the perfect spiritual hideaway, I think I might have found it. Like something out of a legend, nestled inside an ancient grotto carved out of steep limestone cliffs in a remote region of Italy, the clandestine Temple of Valadier is thought to symbolize the Virgin Mary’s Roman Catholic title, “Refugium eccatorum”, meaning “refuge of sinners“… (c) Luca…

NEWER POSTS 1 … 187 188 189 … 211 OLDER POSTS