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Category / Inspiration Vault

The Mysterious Art of the Falling Panties

Apparently, women’s underwear in the 1950s was just pants. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist). I stumbled upon the work of a Chicago-born artist, Art Frahm, who was best-known for his pin-up paintings between the 1940s-60s, in particular, his “ladies in distress” series, depicting doll-like damsels whose panties would perilously fall to the ground in the most public of predicaments. Since 1996, American…

Today I Stumbled upon a Secret Kingdom of Lost Toys

What is it that makes someone start a collection which alters the course of their entire life? For Mel Birnkrant, it was an iron Mickey bank he saw at the Paris flea market in 1958. His hotel room rent was $30 a month and the toy was $10. It was in that moment, at the iconic Marché aux Puces,…

Twisted Love Affairs of the “Lost Generation” of English Eccentrics

We’ve all heard of Hemingway and his band of literati’s and artistes that shook up Parisian society throughout the 1920’s, whom we nostalgically call the “Lost Generation”. Lesser-known to us however, is the “Bloomsbury Group”, a collection of talented bohemians across the channel who were pioneers of their time in British art and literature and openly rejected…

A Surrealist Parisian Dinner Party chez Madame Rothschild, 1972

Dali was there of course and Audrey Hepburn showed up with her head trapped inside a Magritte birdcage. Never has there been a dinner party quite like the “Diner de Têtes Surrealiste” that took place at the suburban Parisian mansion of Baron Guy de Rothschild and his ‘hostess with the mostess’, Marie-Helene de Rothschild. Only the crème…

The Real Jessica Rabbit

What I remember most about Jessica Rabbit is how she was always wearing that provocative red dress, cut oh so inappropriately low at the back, even just to run around town. Meet the real-life Jessica Rabbit, Miss Vikki Dougan, the 1950s ‘It girl’ who inspired the iconic cartoon sex bomb… Photographs by Ralph Crane for…

Lulu White and her Belle Epoque Mansion of Interracial Sex Work

In New Orleans, stories seem to seep out of the soggy ground. Something about the heady mix of influences– African, Caribbean, Native American and French – against a landscape of backwaters and bayous creates a culture of permissiveness where characters invent the most outlandish versions of themselves in ways that would be dismissed as implausible…

Life Inside a Genie’s Lamp, in Brooklyn

There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who furnish, and those who decorate. “My apartment is something that has evolved over time,” says New York City interior decorator Sean McNanney, “Ultimately my main inspiration is an Upper East Side classic six transported to Wes Anderson’s take on Old Constantinople – if that…

Before & After Pin-Up Models Back in the Day without Photoshop

Ever wonder why today’s fashion campaigns are a product of lengthy Photoshopping sessions? What kind of touch-ups did the models get before Adobe came along and changed our world forever? As these pin-up before & afters show, the models literally became cartoons of their former selves…

Centuries Ago, They were Facetuning, Filtering and Catfishing Too

In 1539, Anne of Cleves met her hot-tempered fiancé, King Henry VIII, for the very first time – and to say it was awkward might be one of the biggest understatements in courtship history. Of course the union was politically calculated, but a flustered Henry proceeded to tank the marriage after claiming she looked nothing like her…

A Decade before the World had the Internet, France was Online & Hooked on Minitel

When the world wide web entered our homes in the mid 90s, the French must have been feeling a distinct sense of dejá vu. After all, anyone in France with a telephone had been online an entire decade before the internet came along. From 1978 to 2012, there was Minitel, one of the most successful pre-World…

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