13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CDXCXXIII)

1. Grandparents model other people’s forgotten laundry Chang Wan-ji and Hsu Sho-er have become Instagram-famous for wearing outfits curated from the hundreds of items left behind by absent-minded customers at their laundromat in central Taiwan. ⁣Their 31-year-old grandson and unofficial stylist, Reef Chang, originally came up with the idea to create @wantshowasyoung on Instagram when business slowed…

Let’s Window Shop for French Fairytale Homes

Chateaux hunting is a veritable mood right now – the idea of quitting urban life, recruiting your best friends to go all in on the adventure and living out the rest of your days fixing up your French fortress with an endless supply of wine & cheese. There is certainly no shortage of chateaux in…

Death Row Inmates Are Making Art. Would You Buy It?

Nicola White didn’t leave her heart in San Francisco, she left it in the San Quentin State Prison, just over the Golden Gate Bridge. “It’s funny,” she tells us by phone from her native England, “I never set out thinking, ‘I’m going to Death Row and I’m going to start a project with these prisoners…

If Fanny Packs made a comeback, surely the Parasol Can Too

For the average person, stepping out with an elegant sun parasol in western society today would probably feel like stepping out in cosplay. You might as well be wearing a corset too. Sadly, not since our grandparent’s generation has carrying a parasol been commonplace, but akin to the disappearance of men’s hats from everyday fashion,…

The Black Woman’s Forgotten Fight against the Laws that Banned her Hair

There are many reasons why it’s not “just hair” for Black women. Before the “Black is Beautiful” and natural hair movement emerged during the 1960s, anti-Black hair sentiment in Western society existed for centuries, most contentiously in colonial Louisiana when a series of laws actually banned Creole women from displaying their hair in public. Introduced…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CDXCXXII)

1. Barbie’s Real-Life California Dream House (For Sale) Asking $5,999,000, found on Sotheby’s Realty. 2. Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights, 1490 – 1510 Found on Tumblr. 3. Pages from the sexual and existential cookbook of Dorothy Iannone, 1969 Discover more of her work here. 4. Now we can virtually tour the tomb of…

The Day the Black Supermodels Stormed Versailles

There’s a “Battle of Versailles” they don’t teach you about in history class; the event that transformed the world’s most iconic château into a star-studded battle royale between French and American fashion designers in the fall of 1973. The guest list was legendary, with Josephine Baker, Princess Grace, Andy Warhol in the audience to name…

The Lost Art of “Scrap Book” Fancy Dress

At the start of the pandemic, we looked at some people-repelling fashion statements of yore and wondered whether the surreal measures of a socially-distanced world might impact the future of fashion. Fast-forward several months and an article in the New Yorker this week has declared our current fashion mood as the “the Slob-Chic Style of…

Let’s Get Whisked Away by Kitschy Kaiju Japanese Monsters

Who doesn’t love a good B-movie monster? Step into the world of tokusatsu (特撮), or “special effect filming” in Japanese. The term is shorthand for a genre of live action films bursting with heavy handed special effects, and a slew of freaky, giant creatures known as kaiju (monsters). Some top notch cheese, for sure – but…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CDXCXXI)

1. This Restaurant in Nice, Then & Now Occupying an iconic location in Nice, hovering above the sea on the famous pillar of rock and the base of the diving boards themselves, the restaurant welcomes you in this most unusual setting, steeped in history. Le Plongeoir. 2. Nessie hunter looks like someone from another time…