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Category / People / Icons / Muses

He’s the P.T. Barnum of the Deep South, leading a One-Man Art Movement

Butch Anthony’s cabinet of curiosities, aka the Museum of Wonder, isn’t easy to find. Beyond the help of Google Maps down these sparse backroads of rural Seale, Alabama, you have to rely on Anthony’s hand-drawn map. There’s no sign, just an ordinary black mailbox. Your one clue that you’ve found the place is the address…

Can We Talk About Dali’s Amazing Sell-Out Era?

“Then the Alka Seltzer shoots into the stomach!” are words you might not expect to hear from Salvador Dali from the comfort of your own living room. Yet, for anyone with a television in the 1960s and ’70s, the Surrealist legend also became a staple of the small screen, sharing his abounding, rehearsed excitement for…

Discovering Dalida, the Tragic Diva

Before living in Paris, I did not know Dalida, but this city was on a first-name basis with her– heck, they even called her “Saint Dalida”. She sold more than 170 million albums worldwide, had a career that spanned over 30 years and became an international icon, ranking among the biggest singers of all time. And yet, outside…

Meet the Man Who Dressed Dolly Parton

An overdose of rhinestone encrusted onto pastel leathers with fringes at every available seam. It’s so bad it’s good. I never stopped to think about where country music’s obsession with those bedazzled cowboy suits came from, but today I learned it all began with one man who became the couturier to country music’s biggest stars. Let’s meet the Rhinestone Cowboy…

The Secret Invention behind Michael Jackson’s Anti-Gravity Lean

Ever since the first time I saw Michael Jackson do his infamous gravity-defying lean in Moonwalker, it’s remained a total mystery as to how he and his dancers did it. I hopelessly attempted it in front of the television screen for years. But today, the mystery came to an end today and it feels ever…

The African Women who dress like Victorians

Photo by Jim Naughten We’ve already met the Sapeurs, a subculture of extraordinarily dressed male dandies from the Congo who wear expensive tailored suits, elegantly smoke on their pipes and stroll their war-torn slums in immaculate footwear… Now it’s time to meet the women with a flair for western fashion of another era… In the south…

Weekend at Wallis & Edward’s Secret French Cottage

For the man who gave up the throne of England to be with the women he loved, living in seclusion became a life sentence. Exiled from England to avoid stirring up trouble for the Royal Family, Edward and his American wife settled in Paris and lived in the beautiful Chateau Le Bois, which became better known…

Stolen Beauty of the Chin Girls

The isolated mountains of Burma’s Chin state are home to a number of hill tribes that have been separated from modern world for centuries. Chin women used to follow the thousand-year-old tradition of tattooing their faces. The ritual, officially banned by the government in the 1960s, doesn’t attract modern Chin girls anymore. Soon the thousand-year-old…

The Muslim WWII Heroine that Time Forgot

Not many can boast to have made it to the top of the Nazis’ “Most Wanted” list in Paris during World War II, and still fewer Allied radio operatives stayed at the top of that list for longer than a few weeks. Noor Inayat Khan exceeded these expectations, working fervently to bring freedom to Europe…

Meet the Other Legendary Female Aviator (who Could Drink Any Sailor Under the Table)

Amelia Earhart might be the first woman aviator that comes to mind, but she was only one of an incredible group of flying female record breakers during the golden age of aviation in the 1920s and 30s. The Ninety-Nines was founded in 1929, a group of female aviators named for the 99 charter members when there were…

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