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Category / People / Icons / Muses

Discovering the Real African Queen

Key Largo! For lovers of all things nostalgic, the name of this small, charming island off the coast of Florida, brings to mind hard-boiled, 1940s film noir……Bogart and Bacall. Whilst on a recent trip exploring the Keys, your stateside correspondent came across something quite remarkable – and entirely suited to the golden age of Hollywood.…

Inside the Annual Ernest Hemingway Look-Alike Competition

If you’d gone for a walk around Key West in the 1930s, chances are you might have bumped into Ernest Hemingway. Whether making the short stroll from his house on Whitehead Street to the bars on Duval, one block over and several up, or perhaps on his way to the nearby marina where he moored…

Who was the Original Lady Gaga?

Female Dandyism isn’t just about donning a Pair of Brogues… In her outfits made out of animal flesh, the gimp masks and alien egg-vessels (that thing she hatched from during her 2011 Grammy performance), you wouldn’t think to describe Lady Gaga as a dandy. But if you take a closer look, you’ll discover that much…

Deep in Italy, One Man’s Surrealist Mini-City Sleeps

It’s a labyrinthine citadel more surreal than even the weirdest of Fellini sets. “La Scarzuola” is a modern wannabe-Utopian estate imagined by one man and built amongst the pointy trees of Italy’s Montegabbione in the 1950s. This esoteric wonderland and its elaborate surrealist structures are awaiting your visit… Echoing the dreamlike worlds of Dali and…

How Monarchs and Their Mistresses Avoided the Walk of Shame

There’s no denying that history’s juiciest stories often have roots in-between the sheets, and as general rule, whether you were ruler of the kingdom or head of the Catholic church, having multiple lovers still required a serious escape route to avoid any unnecessary embarrassment. Ever intrigued by a secret passageway or a hidden staircase, we’ve compiled…

The Last Palace of the Champs Elysées: A Courtesan’s Secret Alcazar

Hiding in plain sight, you’re looking into the eye of the last remaining example of the magnificent private mansions that once lined the Champs Élysées in Paris. Hotel de la Païva was built by a famous 19th century courtesan who came from humble beginnings in the ghetto of Moscow. Esther Lachmann, aka La Païva, became…

Before Björk, There Was the Last Incan Princess

She claimed to be the final descendant of the last Incan Emperor, Atahualpa — a claim the Peruvian government backed in 1946 — and she allegedly learned to sing from “the creatures of the forest.” Yma Sumac didn’t just hit octaves. She knocked them out of the park with a growl, and took them for…

The Master and his Muse who Outdid the Mona Lisa

It’s a breezy day in 1950s Cape Town. Monika Pon-su-san is busy serving a customer in her uncle’s laundromat when a curly-haired, angel-faced stranger walks through the door. Vladimir Tretchikoff’s gaze is fixated on her – an exquisite young beauty with lustrous dark hair, full lips and a shy smile. He needs to paint her.…

When Big Brands were Getting High in the Seventies

In the late 1960s and 70s, America’s big corporations could see the psychedelic writing on the wall and they knew they had to do something. A wave of psychedelia was taking over pop culture and the LSD-infused hippie aesthetic was huge. The influence of drug culture on some of the most iconic brands saw everyone…

Meet the Godfather of Voguing

Willi Ninja did far more than “strike a pose”. Before Madonna was Voguing for the masses on MTV in 1990, the niche dance form was being created by black and latino drag queens during the ballroom era of 1960’s Harlem, New York. It was Willi Ninja, an ambitious young dancer, who pioneered Voguing, and used it to…

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