15 49.0138 8.38624 both 0 bullet 0 4000 1 0 horizontal https://www.messynessychic.com 300 4000

Category / People / Icons / Muses

From Elizabeth Taylor to Adolph Hitler, Presenting History’s Greatest Decoys

First things first, we’re about to spill the contents of a very mixed bag of history’s greatest eccentrics. It’s one filled with impersonators, decoys, and body doubles throughout the 20th century who’ve got one thing in common: they’re really, really good at getting under someone else’s skin. From Andy Warhol to Adolf Hitler, some of…

We Found Dali’s Long Lost Surrealist Soulmate

The truth is, surrealist art was a man’s world. Its founder, André Breton was an unrepentant misogynist who believed women could not hold a central position in art. Dali too, could be patronising of his fellow female surrealists. When asked about our favourite bohemian queen of Paris, Leonor Fini, he said of her work, “Better than most,…

Vintage Muse du Jour: The Greatest Diva of them All

It’s 1970, and for once, the world’s greatest soprano is silent. Interviewer David Frost has just asked her, “Who really is Maria Callas?,” la Divina takes a moment to answer. “There are actually two people in me,” she says, “There is ‘Maria’ and there is the ‘Callas’ that I have to live up to.” But which one must…

One Last Shopping Spree at a New York Icon of Fashion

For 123 years, Camelot was on 5th Avenue, otherwise known as the Henri Bendel department store, the place to be for any fashionable woman worth her salt in 20th century America. So when the timeless Manhattan mainstay announced its imminent, forever closure this month, we kind of lost it. Needed a hat that looked like a…

Mods vs Rockers in Brighton’s Battle of the Beach Chairs, 1964

One of my favourite things to come across when I’m researching is a snapshot from history that I’m completely unfamiliar with. A forgotten story to re-discover, another clue to the bigger picture or just a bizarre anecdote from the past; these are my little treasures hiding under rocks. And today, I found these baffling and beautiful photographs of what I can only…

Who was Chet Baker?

I got really into the sound of Chet Baker this summer. I went through all the albums; the live sessions from Paris that made me feel like I could be on the Left Bank back in 1960-something; the “lost tapes”, the remastered classics and anything I could find with those smooth-as-butter vocals to get me through…

Princess Bonaparte’s Orgasmic Quest

Every family has its black sheep. For the Bonaparte clan, it was Napoleon’s great grandniece, Princess Marie (1882-1962). She was not only a pioneer of psychoanalysis who actually saved Freud from the Nazis, but a staunch advocate for women’s sex research on some pretty taboo topics. You see, she was on a war path —…

Whatever You Do, Don’t Tell the French About Tarrare

(A word of caution: this is not an article to read on your lunchbreak). He could wrap his empty stomach around his waist like a belt, and began eating his bodyweight in meat every day as a child. His lips were nearly non-existent, and his mouth was so wide, it could hold 12 eggs at…

A Lost Breed of Parisians

Without them, Paris would’ve stood still. They were immortalised in song by Serge Gainsbourg, and put into poetry by the cheeky Raymond Queneau. But by 1975, Paris’ metro ticket punchers, or poinçonneurs, were a dying breed. Their rise and fall traces the streamlining of the whole métropolitan system, which was inaugurated at the 1900 Paris World’s Fair to a crowd in…

The UNESCO Treasure Made of Living Humans

Behold Catalonia’s best collective party trick: assembling hundreds of supple Spaniards into a giant tower, or castell, up to 10 stories high. And this isn’t just empty acrobatics. It’s a UNESCO sanctified treasure (even though it’s made out of humans) with a story that has both mirrored, and challenged, the nature of its country’s patrimony… We can…

NEWER POSTS 1 … 54 55 56 … 83 OLDER POSTS