Who Was the Love Doctor of Belle Epoque Paris?

Dr. Samuel Pozzi may be a father of modern gynaecology, whose name is still tied to a pair of surgical scissors used to operate on fallopian tubes around the world today (the pozzi forceps), but his story would be much better placed in a steamy romance novel than a medical textbook. The “disgustingly handsome” celebrity…

Men Wore Corsets, History Says

Pink for girls, blue for boys. Heels for women, flats for men. Corsets for ladies, burly silhouettes for gents? Turn back the clock and you’ll find history is full of contradictions. In fact, until the 20th century, pink was a boy’s colour, high heels were invented for men and yes, they also wore corsets. The…

How French Fashion Emerged even More Decadently from the Guillotine

Those of us who paid any attention in history class can probably recount a few key details and players of the French Revolution – there was Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI (AKA Louis the Last) and their posse at Versailles who were eating too much cake; the revolutionaries who kicked things off by storming the Bastille…

Unearthing the Curious Quentin Crisp

Writer. Dandy. Philosopher. Creature of the night. Quentin Crisp was so many things, but above all he was steadfastly himself. Sting dedicated his song, “Englishman in New York” to Crisp. The New York Times memorialised him as a revolutionary “Writer and Actor on Gay Themes” in light of his 1968 book, The Naked Civil Servant,…

The Macaroni Club: Fashion History’s Forgotten Drag Subculture?

There’s a famous American song “Yankee Doodle” – you might’ve heard of it – the lyrics go like this: “Yankee Doodle went to town, A-riding on a pony, Stuck a feather in his cap, And called it macaroni.” The familiar patriotic tune was in fact created by the British to mock the Americans during the…

The Dapper Rebels of Los Angeles, 1966

In the summer of 1965, riots broke out in the Watts neighborhood of southern Los Angeles. Over a six-day period, 34 people were killed, 1,032 injured and over 3,438 arrests were made. In 1966, LIFE magazine revisited the site of the worst riots America had ever seen in its history. The photo essay depicting the…

Who Is the Dandy Man? The Congo Subculture Uncovered

Modern Man is Afraid of Dandyism. Except for a few… When you think of silk handkerchiefs, pink corduroys, tweed and double-breasted tailoring, would you associate such a style of dress with some of the poorest slums of Africa? What you’re looking at is the phenomenon of Sapeurs, a subculture of extraordinarily dressed dandies from the Congo. In…

Who was the Original Lady Gaga?

Female Dandyism isn’t just about donning a Pair of Brogues… In her outfits made out of animal flesh, the gimp masks and alien egg-vessels (that thing she hatched from during her 2011 Grammy performance), you wouldn’t think to describe Lady Gaga as a dandy. But if you take a closer look, you’ll discover that much…

Let’s Raise a Glass to America’s Black Wall Street

Something else they forgot to tell us about in history class: Black Wall Street. Why is it that our textbooks neglected to tell us about the African Americans who opened their own banks, did business with the Rockefellers and prospered as entrepreneurs decades before the Civil Rights Movement? Yes indeed, long before desegregation, America had…

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The “Unknown” Photographer who Documented the Cool Kats of Mid-Century Mali

At a New York art exhibition in the early 90s, three black & white photographs hung on the white walls, credited to a photographer “Unknown“. The portraits of fashionably dressed people and families taken between 1940 and the early sixties were actually the work of a nationally renowned photographer in Mali. Outside of his country however, Seydou Keita…

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