Nature’s Humble Gold: The Unexpected Elegance of Straw Craft

And now, for a DIY project at the intersection of spooky and cozy: the corn doll – which isn’t always in the form of a doll, mind you. That term is shorthand for any kind of straw artwork, be it a horseshoe or a crown, a dog or a pentagram. We love it because it’s…

How Humans Have Toyed with Time

Who dictates Time? Depends on who you ask, and in what century. Like us, you probably rely on a Western, 365 day calendar to tell you that today, it’s such and such date in 2020 AD. But if you asked a French Revolutionary, “Year 1” began in 1789. And if you asked an American Kodak…

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

1. For those with an appreciation for Striped Awnings A little booklet from 1923, found on the Internet Archive. 2. The 1956 Inter 175A Berline Micro Car The Inter was designed and built by an aircraft company. The French engineers at S.N.C.A.N. (Societe Nationale de Construction AeroNautique) had applied all they knew from plane design…

Our Zoom Date with a Time Travelling Egyptologist

Somehow, she transported us to a balmy summer night down the Nile river in the middle of a pandemic. Our latest virtual fireside chat brought us to Dr. Colleen Darnell, a time-travelling 1920s fashionista and groundbreaking Egyptologist, who we’ve long admired here at Messy Nessy Chic. You might compare her to female “Indiana Jones” or…

Complete with Art Deco Nightclub, Hearst’s Hollywood Love Nest is (still) For Sale

You’ll see it in the The Godfather, in Francis Ford Coppola’s infamous horse head scene. It was the enviable house of Whitney Houston’s character Rachel Marron in The Bodyguard. Even Jackie and John F. Kennedy stayed there during their honeymoon, and later used it as his West Coast presidential election HQ. The Beverley House has…

If You Can’t Go Out to the Disco, Bring the Disco to You

It’s exercise! It’s dance! It’s an excuse to throw on a pair of rayon flare pants! As weekends begin to feel somewhat meaningless in a quarantined world, with few faces to see and certainly no place to go, here at MessyNessyChic, we could all use something to look forward to. Nightlife as we know it…

In Defence of a Bad DIY Haircut before its Post-Lockdown Debut

I’m on the brink of cutting my own hair, and I can’t be the only one. I’ve been imagining that coming out of lockdown is going to look like the 1980s for hair all over again. And it got me thinking – there must have been something to those crazy perms and gravity-defying bangs for…

The Mystery of Baudelaire’s Maddening Mistress

There’s love. There’s lust. Then there’s Jeanne DuVal, who embodied something between the two in her tumultuous relationship with Charles Baudelaire, France’s original “bad boy” poet. As a muse to the rebellious Parisian dandy, she inspired some of the most haunting, revolutionary verses in history – odes to the woman he loved to love, and…

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

1. These Downloadable coloring sheets inspired by Wes Anderson Movies We featured artist Jordan Bolton’s poster work on 13 Things before, but he’s kindly offering these colouring sheets to download for free and help us pass the time. Find the colouring sheets here, via My Modern Met. 2. What Wes Anderson is watching during Quarantine…

Our Zoom Date with the Guy Who Bought a Ghost Town & is Now Quarantined There (Alone)

In 2018, Brent Underwood and his pal, Jon Bier, spent their life savings on the purchase of a California ghost town, “Cerro Gordo” – and life has never been the same since. Underwood’s virtual tour of the town and its stories – equal parts Clint Eastwood Western, Twin Peaks, and The Shining – brought its…