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Category / People / Icons / Muses

If Ophelia Could Talk: The True Story of the Iconic Artist-Muse

If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the years, it’s to listen to the muse – she usually has the juiciest details behind some of history’s most iconic artworks and artists. Today, we travel to the gauzy, sun-dappled world of the romantic pre-Raphaelite painters and zoom in on their unsung queen, “Ophelia” in that iconic…

Alone with Her Bike, the First Females to Ride Around the World

Happy women’s history month. Which only gives me another reason to write about more incredible humans that also happen to be female. What fascinates me most about the stories of the women I’d like to share with you today, is not that they dared to figure out how to ride a motorbike or infiltrate a…

Our Zoom Date with a Time Travelling Egyptologist

Somehow, she transported us to a balmy summer night down the Nile river in the middle of a pandemic. Our latest virtual fireside chat brought us to Dr. Colleen Darnell, a time-travelling 1920s fashionista and groundbreaking Egyptologist, who we’ve long admired here at Messy Nessy Chic. You might compare her to female “Indiana Jones” or…

Classrooms without Walls: A Forgotten Age of Open-air Schools

This old black and white photograph pops out at me every now and again on the internet, and it just about sums up my feelings on what my education should have looked like. The photograph was taken in 1957 in the Netherlands where open air schools were quite popular at the time. The idea of an al fresco classroom should…

If You Can’t Go Out to the Disco, Bring the Disco to You

It’s exercise! It’s dance! It’s an excuse to throw on a pair of rayon flare pants! As weekends begin to feel somewhat meaningless in a quarantined world, with few faces to see and certainly no place to go, here at MessyNessyChic, we could all use something to look forward to. Nightlife as we know it…

What if the First African American Woman to Run for President Had Won?

Shall we for a moment, imagine an alternate reality where Shirley Chisholm became President of the United States in 1972 instead of Nixon? As the first African American woman in Congress, as well as first woman and African American to run for President, Shirley campaigned under the powerful mantra, “Unbought & Unbossed“. And let’s just…

Muse du Jour: What Happened to Shelley Duvall?

She was the woman wrapped in a fairytale. You may know her from classics like The Shining (1980) or Annie Hall (1977) or perhaps you know the sound of her warm voice saying, “Hello, I’m Shelley Duvall…” during the intro of a magical “Faerie Tale Theatre” TV hour she not only created, but hosted and…

Our Zoom Date with Artist & Picasso Muse, “Sylvette David”

In April of 1954, a young Sylvette David became one of Pablo Picasso’s most iconic, if not enigmatic muses (if you haven’t read our article of her story, we suggest you do that first and come back). Who was this ethereal woman with an intelligent stare and the impossibly high ponytail? More than half a…

Even With a Name Like Aloha Wanderwell, You’ve Probably Never Heard of Her

You could say she was the female Indiana Jones, except of course, Indie was a fictional character, and Aloha Wanderwell was very much the real deal. After landing a seaplane on an unexplored stretch of the Amazonian River, she captured the first-known visual recordings of Stone Age peoples while living amongst the Bororo tribe, and when…

The Story behind “Keep Calm and Carry On”

It’s one of the most recognizable posters in the world, an internet meme reinvented thousands of times over and yet do any of us actually know the story behind it? This excellent little video schools us on the origins of the wartime poster and how it was actually lost in history until 2000 when it…

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