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Category / People / Icons / Muses

That Quiet Couple Next Door Who Brought Magic Mushrooms to the Masses

Ah the psychedelic 60s, what a time to be out of your mind. It’s easy to assume bohemian beatniks, free lovin’ hippies, and prog rockers popularised mind-bending medicines to everyday folk, but let’s go back a step before we start spiralling. Who’d have thought that American counterculture was kickstarted in the most conforming of places,…

A Dinner Party with History’s Most Notorious Art Thieves

Imagine gathering around a dinner table with the guy who stole the Mona Lisa, an heiress who stole a Vermeer, the “gentleman thief” responsible for some of the most sensational art thefts in Europe, and let’s throw an invite to Pablo Picasso for good measure, for his own attitude towards the world of art fraud…

Heartbreak Hides in the Walls of This Paris Mansion

Museums are usually a feast for the eyes, but rarely are they this much of a treat for the heart. Cozied up beside Paris’ Parc Monceau you’ll find just that: the opulent Musée Nissim de Camondo, a perfectly preserved mansion from 1911 that belonged to the affluent Camondo family. As stunning as the interiors and antiques are, it’s the…

Almost in America: Portraits from Ellis Island

“Amidst crowds of anxious immigrants milling about, Hine had to locate his subject, isolate [them] from the crowd, and set the pose-almost always, because of the language barrier without words. He had to set up his simple 5 x 7 view camera on its rickety tripod, focus the camera, pull the slide, dust his flash…

A Crash-course in French Yé-Yé Pop Culture

While the Beatles were singing “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah” in England, continental Europe was forming its own musical phenomenon. The French called it Yé-Yé, literally derived from the “yeah! yeah!” lyrics that had become the sound of British and American rock and roll. Inspired by the Anglophone craze, the Yé-Yé movement provided a…

Hitchcock’s Haunted House Party

Who better to kick off our Halloween weekend celebrations with than the master of horror and suspense himself, Mr. Alfred Hitchcock. In 1953, as he was about to embark on his next film, The Wrong Man, Hitchcock decided to throw a “Ghost-Haunted House Party” at his rented New York pad on East 18th St. Guest…

You’ve probably Never Heard of the Most Fascinating Woman of the Belle Epoque

Corsets could be blamed (among many things) for preventing a lot of women throughout history from living their best lives, but Camille du Gast was not one of them. She was a self-styled “exploratrice” with a mind of her own and a penchant for speed. If you weren’t familiar with any women pursuing race car…

Fitzgerald’s First Love: Literary Muse or Victim of Plagiarism?

Like her mother and grandmother before her, Ginevre King was named after Leonardo Da Vinci’s portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci. And she had many parallels with the Italian aristocrat: King also came from immense wealth and would be most remembered for how she was depicted by one of her era’s most famous creatives, in her…

Let’s Talk about Black Princesses

“Dream with ambition, lead with conviction, and see yourself in a way that others might not see you, simply because they’ve never seen it before”, said Vice President-elect, Kamala Harris, who made history as the first Black and South Indian-American woman to hold the office. In the afterglow of that landmark moment, we’re celebrating with…

Searching for Georges Méliès in Paris

Georges Méliès was an illusionist, in every sense of the word; a man who revolutionised cinema forever. He played an indispensable role with his innovations, creating the world’s first film studio, the first fictional film and when it comes to the invention of special effects in cinema, he’s the guy to thank. Yet, unlike other…

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