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Category / People / Icons / Muses

The Hair That Launched a Thousand Tweets

Stop what you’re doing, and take a seat, because senator Valentina Petrenko’s hair is about to sweep you off your feet with its gravity-defying fabulousness. This Russian politician has been captivating the internet recently with her truly one-of-a-kind look, becoming quite the Twitter starlet, and leaving folks bewildered as to how she manages to keep it all…

Vintage Muse du Jour: Mina Mazzini

What happens when you put two tons of glitter, a killer voice, and a dash of Surrealism into a blender? You get “the Queen of Screamers”, Italian songstress Mina Mazzini. She was the reigning bad girl of Italy’s airwaves in the 1960s and ’70s, raising everyone’s eyebrows but her own–which she shaved off, naturally– and…

The Many Odd Jobs of Andy Warhol

Ask any full-time creative exactly where they find inspiration, or what their line of work even is, and they’ll tell you of all the jobs they’ve juggled not only to pay the rent, but stay relevant. And with history as our witness, Warhol was pretty damn good at that (as well as keeping a few…

The Queen Who Worked at Macy’s

Most princess stories involve finding Prince Charming and living happily ever after as king and queen of the castle. They don’t typically include a part about the princess working at Macy’s department store, but that’s what makes this princess story so great… Anne Antoinette Françoise Charlotte was born in Paris in 1923, the only daughter of Prince René of Bourbon-Parma and Princess…

We Need to Talk About Zeki Müren

It’s 1977, and Mick Jagger is sitting down for an intimate dinner in the port city of Bodrum, Turkey. He’s vacationing on the coast with Atlantic Records president Ahmet Ertegun, and about to meet the evening’s final — and most anticipated — guest: Turkey’s bedazzled, belly-dancing answer to Liberace; a man whose platform heels paved the way…

Yearbook Memories of a Historically Black University

It’s that time of year when college graduates are throwing off their caps and I thought this might be a good time to share some photographs I’ve been accumulating for a while now. Gathered here from the internet, are bits and pieces from the early yearbooks of Howard University, a historically black college and one of…

The American Jet Set Artist who Painted the Peak of 1980s Excess

When a former beauty queen-turned-dictator’s wife commissions you to paint her family portrait, you know you’d better do it– and make them all look as fabulous as they did on last week’s episode of Dynasty. The year was 1982 when Imelda Marcos, the First Lady of the Philippines with the world’s largest-known shoe collection, first…

Murder in the Blueprints of Frank Lloyd Wright

The legendary American architect Frank Lloyd Wright never wore his heart on his sleeve. For better or for worse, he dressed up his blueprints in his feelings, and nowhere is that reflex so painfully clear than in his handful of mysterious, pre-Colombian-inspired houses built in California in the early 1920s. You could call them “the…

The Transgender French Spy History Forgot

The Chevalier d’Eon knew how to turn heads. She was charming to boot, and an unmatched swordfighter; an impeccable spy for the French government, and capable of dazzling the Empress of Russia. Above all, she found the courage to publically affirm her identity as a transgender woman — an especially intimidating task in 18th century.…

That Time Walt Disney Bought His Own Autonomous Utopian City of the Future

And then, Walt Disney created utopia. Well, almost. Before his death in 1966, America’s greatest entrepreneur was planning his own city which would have almost total autonomy within its borders, where residents would live and work for Disney in some way, using the latest technology in their homes and experimenting with innovative community ideals. Walt called it E.P.C.O.T,…

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