The Depraved Dance Marathons of the 1930s You Didn’t Know About

In a stifling gymnasium in Anywhere, America dozens of couples shuffle around the cramped space clinging on to each other for dear life. Spectators in stands cheer on their favourite couples, watching their aching legs barely hold up their exhausted bodies. Some have mastered the art of sleeping on their partners shoulders; as long as…

Streamliner Trains that Oozed the Elegance of Old World Travel

Say, can I get that train pamphlet in a framed poster? That’s not something you’re likely to wonder about any of the marketing coming out of today’s rail travel industry. I found this gorgeous vintage pamphlet design by Union Pacific Railroad and it sent me on a cyber hunt for more memorabilia from a glittering era in train travel between the 1930s to the…

Amelia Earhart’s Forgotten Fashion Line (could probably do with a comeback)

The idea of the celebrity fashion line dates as far back as 1850, when a wildly popular Swedish opera singer named Jenny Lind decided to top up her high-grossing ticket sales with a range of Jenny Lind-branded merchandise, including gloves, bonnets and shawls. Then came silent film star Irene Castle, dubbed the “best-dressed woman in…

Stepping back in Time to a Jazz Age Lawn Party

Can you imagine anything more delightful than sailing from Manhattan, and heading for an uninhabited island filled with the ghostly remnants of a deserted army base; and once there, to step back in time to an authentic lawn party from the Jazz Age ? To dress in white linens, sip exquisite cocktails, and dance the…

This 1930s Quartet Didn’t Know It, But They Were Rap’s First Recorded Artists

Turns out, almost a century ago, a special group of men was spitting verses about Noah’s Ark, Ezekiel’s wheel, and every other juicy anecdote in the Bible. These days, we call it “Gospel rap,” and hail it as a genre pioneered by a 1930s US gospel group, “The Jubalaires,” who paved the way for 1990s…

She Was Surrealism’s Black Sheep

“Pure psychic automatism.” That was Ithell Colquhoun in a nutshell, according to fellow Surrealist André Breton. The flattery is a bit of a suprise, given that Breton – one of several founders of a movement that has made little room to uplift its women – was somewhat of a vocal hater of women in the…

From the Brothel to Beaux-Arts: She Should Have been China’s Own Matisse

Some people paint by numbers. Formality. Then there are those who paint with something else entirely. A kind of electric, lived experience. A place of intimacy with their subject matter that makes a portrait sing, and a still life tremble. Pan Yuliang was one of those people, albeit one who might’ve been left out of…

Nazi Summer Camp, Long Island, USA

Camp Siegfried was forcibly shut down by the US government when Germany declared war on the United States. It had been protected by the 1st Amendment until that time, when it became illegal for US citizens to swear allegiance to Germany. Founded in 1935, it was operated by the German American Bund, an American Nazi…

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…

There’s an Iconic Art Deco Department Store Frozen in Time inside an LA Law School

It’s a spring afternoon in 1936, as you pull up to the doorstep of 3050 Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. The valet takes your car, the doorman tips his cap, and suddenly you find yourself in the belly of a 230,000-square-foot mecca of West Coast fashion. Known as “Bullocks Wilshire,” this storied California department store was…