The Adorable, Squishable Soho Sex Shop

Do you remember the girl who revived an abandoned corner shop last year in East London and filled it with hand-sewn “products” made of felt– over 4,000 fuzzy creations to be precise, from Mars bars to newspapers and even the shop’s till? Well the hugely talented artist Lucy Sparrow has struck again, this time, transforming a…

How One Woman’s Lock of Hair could Become the World’s Most Precious Diamond

Like us, you might have assumed that a perfect diamond can only come from deep under the Earth’s crust, made from molten rock and metals, consisting of pure carbon which has been subject to immense and temperature for millions of years. But here’s a fun fact: hair and diamonds are both made out of carbon. And with…

The Vault

Interview with a Parisian Burlesque Dancer

I was at a masked party one evening in Paris when Marie Antoinette showed up in nothing but her underwear, albeit very pretty underwear indeed. She prowled sumptuously about the room until she found a stage and proceeded to perform the most hypnotising dance with two giant feather fans. Who is that woman behind the feathers? What is…

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The Forgotten LGBT Queen of Paris and Her Secret Masonic Temple

She was the kind of woman who never belonged to anyone but herself. At least, when it came to love. But for Natalie Clifford Barney, life overflowed with colour, creativity, and passion in Paris’ Left Bank during one of city’s most romantic periods. Think of her as a lesser-known Gertrude Stein, albeit one who curated…

A Photographer’s Forgotten Muse on the French Riviera

There was definitely something about Renée. When the legendary French photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue met her while strolling the streets of Paris in 1930, he fell in love instantly. Tall, chic and hiding coquettishly under a wide elegant hat, he nicknamed her the ‘parasol’. Together they embarked on what Lartigue remembers as an “eternal vacation”, a dreamlike two-year holiday in the…

Behind the Curtain of the 1940s Chinatown Nightclubs that Shattered Asian Stereotypes

Picture a night out in 1940s San Francisco. You’re in a glamorous nightclub with a floorshow. A sequined dancer does a pas de bourrée on her toes while her tuxedoed partner wows the crowd with multiple drop splits. Then a singer with a warm bluesy voice belts Some of These Days. Finally, a nude dancer…

The “Other” Lost Generation of Black American Artists in Paris

Originally, this was supposed to be a pretty straight-forward piece on an American ex-pat artist whose enchanting paintings of 1930s Paris I’d recently had the fortune of stumbling across via the internet. She was a young woman who had moved to France before the war, where her painting career began to flourish. I was going…

Chronicles of an Affair with his Secretary, Found in an Abandoned Suitcase

The briefcase was found three decades after the affair took place, abandoned in a German apartment and later sold at auction. The contents of the suitcase, an extraordinary collection of materials that chronicled the adulterous relationship between a businessman and his secretary in the late 1960s and 70s. Exposed to our own voyeurism, a recent…

Japan’s Ancient Attitude to Sex was Way Freakier than you’d Imagine

At a glance, the picture looks perfectly innocent: a 19th century, posh portrait of woman sipping tea. Upon closer examination, we learn she’s made up of entangled copulating bodies. Welcome to the fascinating world of ye olde Japanese erotica. Known as “shunga” (春画), the genre flourished in the Edo period (1600s-1800s), and the artworks didn’t…

Preserved Moments of Historical Sass (Vol.2)

The first post seems to have tickled your fancy, so over the past month I’ve been collecting photos on the internet, as well as submissions from readers who rifled through their attics to help me compile more preserved moments of historical sass! Found in Good Housekeeping, June 1952 Found here Reader submission from Peggy…