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Category / How to start a subculture

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…

The Paris Horror Show

Friday night at the theatre would never be quite the same again. Down a dark Parisian alleyway, sheer horror awaited on stage… The Theatre du Grand Guignol, the smallest in Paris, was a former chapel turned theatre tucked away in the small backstreets of Pigalle, the city’s old red light district. As discretely sized and located…

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…

Inside the Shed of the Antlerman

I‘m slightly nervous about posting this article. Not only am I a little freaked out by this place myself, but I have a feeling I might get some flak for it. The problem is, I’m completely in awe of it, so here we go… I’m not entirely sure how I ended up on Antlerman.com, nor was I looking for…

The Anti-Nazi Teen Gang that Beat Up Hitler Youth and Danced to Jazz

A band of adolescent music-lovers, swing dancers and snappy dressers– not exactly the type you’d expect to take on the Nazi Hitler Youth. But in pre-WWII Germany, the Nazi regimentation of society inadvertantly gave rise to massive teenage street gangs who beat up the Hitler Youth, tagged anti-Nazi graffiti at train stations– and listened to…

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…

Made in Chelsea, circa 1950s

It’s debutante season for mid-century London’s high society and Life magazine was on the scene to capture all the tea drinking and social climbing at its finest. I found this set of undated photos in the magazine’s archives which follows a group of well-to-do English debutantes as they attended the various la-di-da events of the social calendar including Ascot,…

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…

Benin’s Amazing Technicolor Voodoo Cloaks

Voodoo has gotten a bad rap. Typically associated with the fear of someone sticking needles into a tiny doll that looks like you, it is widely stereotyped as a black magic cult. But did you know that in the West African country of Benin, believed to be its place of origin, voodoo has been recognised as…

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