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Category / People / Icons / Muses

Style Queens of 1960s Saigon

I was going through a giant archive of old photographs (yes another one), mostly taken by Westerners over in Vietnam during the war, when I started to develop a very unexpected style crush. Who knew Mod fashion made it to 1960s Vietnam? As it turns out, until the early 1970s, before the fall of Saigon, street fashion in South Vietnam adopted elements of…

An 80s Replica of the Saved By the Bell Diner Opens Next Week

It feels like it was just yesterday that I was watching Saved by the Bell while munching a bowl of cereal … probably because it was just yesterday … on Youtube. Like an old familiar blanket, reliving Zack and Kelly’s high school drama at The Max cafeteria sometimes soothes me after a long day. So you can…

Someone Documented the Smallest, Quirkiest Museums in Australia

I can’t understand why the most popular travel guides aren’t the ones that tell you where the smallest and quirkiest places are in every town and country around the world. The intimate and independent museums are always the most underrated and often the best way to get to know the locals and their story as an outsider. Small Museum, curated by…

The 1930s Secret Cambridge Club of Rooftop Climbers

As night fell on Cambridge University in the 1930s, a dapper gang of undergraduate students regularly met in secret to climb up historical buildings, illegally exploring their campus via its rooftops and façades. They were known as the “Night Climbers of Cambridge”, immortalised in a cult guide book on the forbidden practice, anonymously published by the daredevil you see in…

Meet the Hipster Tattoo Artist of Cuba (where Tattoo Parlours are illegal)

While he might look like the average modern hipster, Ché Alejandro actually thinks of himself as a “neo-hippie communist”. In Cuba, there are currently 201 types of private businesses permitted by the government and tattoo shops are not one of them, making Ché’s small parlour in Havana still currently illegal. Despite constantly dodging government closures of his clandestine shop by paying small…

The Man who snuck into the Vietnam War Zone to Buy his Best Friends a Beer

“A lot of my friends were serving in Vietnam. I just wanted to go over there and buy them all a beer. That’s what I did”. John ‘Chickie’ Donohue was a civilian merchant marine from New York City who conned his way into Vietnam at the height of the war to search for his enlisted three best friends and…

Mona Lisa and Machine Guns: Was Leonardo daVinci an Aspiring War Lord?

When you think of Mona Lisa’s peaceful smile, you probably wouldn’t imagine it was captured by the same man who invented the world’s first machine gun. You knew da Vinci was a multi-talented visionary; free-thinker, architect, painter, scientist among many things, but aspiring war lord? Take a look through the blueprints of his lesser-known inventions, and it might start…

The Swedish Subculture Hoarding More 1950s American Cars than the USA

I started this article because I was researching a Scandinavian subculture of ‘greasers’ said to be responsible for Sweden having amassed more restored American 1950s cars than the United States itself has today. The “Raggare” movement, which emerged from a post-war youth counterculture mainly in Sweden and parts of Norway, is known for its undying love of vintage American…

Who was the Kissing Bandit, Baseball’s Forgotten Sex Symbol?

For thirty years, she was the buxom babe of baseball who famously rushed the field at major league baseball games to steal kisses from up to 50 athletes in front of thousands of spectators. The media branded her Morganna, “The Kissing Bandit,” and she quickly became a celebrity in her own right, winning endorsement deals, film, television and magazine…

World War II Stories of a Cult Fashion Jacket

Isn’t she gorgeous? I was taking my morning roam around the internet when I stumbled upon this vintage embroidered silk jacket for sale online at Etsy. Unfortunately, when I clicked the link, I was told, “Sorry, this item has been sold”. Of course it had. But I never give up that easily. And, just as all great and…

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