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Category / People / Icons / Muses

The French Sex Cult from Outer Space

One of France’s most fascinating imports of late is also one of its most controversial: the world’s largest UFO religion of Raëlism, which decrees that life on Earth was scientifically created by a species of extraterrestrials. Founded in 1974, a reported 70,000 members reportedly follow the order today, which enjoys tax-exempt status in the US while…

Ode to the Ice Man

In his autobiography Timebends, Arthur Miller recalls an occupation lost in time – that of the ice man, who wore “leather vests and a wet piece of sackcloth slung over the right shoulder, and once they had slid the ice into the box, they invariably slipped the sacking off and stood there waiting, dripping, for their money.” From…

No, the Other Naomi: An American Supermodel’s Overlooked Legacy

There is much debate on who was the first Black supermodel. Several Black models have accumulated a series of firsts between them throughout history; Helen Williams became one of the most familiar faces in Black advertising in the 1950s, Donyale Luna was the first African-American model to appear on the cover of the British edition of Vogue in 1966,…

Historical Candidates for the Real-Life Carmen San Diego

The nefarious world of conning has long been considered a boy’s club. Even when you google “biggest con artists in the world,” men’s names overwhelmingly dominate the search. Historically, women were thought to have lacked the social capital needed to shrug off the moral trappings of propriety. For the con woman, however, their social limitations…

She Dressed Kate Bush, Need We Say More?

There is a grande dame of Dutch fashion you’ve probably never heard of (if you live outside of The Netherlands). We hadn’t. But then when found a series of photos taken in the 1970s of legendary musician Kate Bush, dressed more exquisitely that we’d ever seen her. Who was she wearing and where can we…

Oh Séraphine, this world was never meant for someone as beautiful as you

There is a line in Don McLean’s Vincent, the poignant folk song released in 1971, that always stuck with me. It goes, “but I could have told you, Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.” The bittersweet lyrics are a tribute to the great Post-Impressionist Vincent Van Gogh of course,…

Vita, the Insatiable Muse of Virginia Woolf

The antics of those with blue blood don’t shock us, in fact we covet their blatant flaunting of taboos and we (albeit secretly and with much envy) gag at what seems like their infinite potential and unlimited opportunities for fornication, frolicking and cavorting. Having said that, within the ranks of nobility there are those who…

The Modernist Maharajas

Theirs is a fairy tale with all the elements that titillate and intrigue us mere mortals no end: a glamorous royal couple living in the lap of luxury, a marriage at an unimaginably young age, the flamboyant holidays on the Côte d’Azur in the company of Man Ray, a jaw-droppingly avant-garde palace, her tragic, untimely…

Meet Lilli, the High-end German Call Girl Who Became Barbie

So it turns out Barbie’s original design was based on a German adult gag-gift escort doll named Lilli. That’s right, she wasn’t a dentist or a surgeon, an Olympian gymnast, a pet stylist or an ambassador for world peace. And she certainly wasn’t a toy for little girls… Lilli on display at the Barbie Museum in Prague Unbeknownst…

What David Bowie Learned from the Gugging Psychiatric Institution

By 1994 David Bowie’s musical career was in a bit of a quiet phase, let’s say. He hadn’t managed to recreate the massive success of his 1983 album Lets Dance. Ziggy Stardust had long since departed back to the cosmos, The Thin White Duke had been retired, and Bowie’s latest incarnation, Tin Machine, had disbanded.…

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