The Last Little Music Shop in East Village

If my computer was a real place, it would probably look like Rainbow Music. Ya won’t know what ‘messy’ truly is until you’ve stepped inside the world of Rainbow music of East Village, New York. A chaos of CDs, tapes and videos stacked up on almost every inch of floor space, the shop doesn’t even…

Hedonist Hollywood’s Lost Garden of Allah

Before James Dean moved into the Chateau Marmont and made it a Hollywood landmark and go-to spot for stars to get up to no good, there was the far more notorious, but now long-forgotten Garden of Allah. The hotel’s ambrosial name certainly had no reflection on its reputation as the never-ending house party on Sunset…

The Strange Anatomy of ABBA’s Infamous (Tax Deductible) Wardrobe

What do house cats, Euro pop, and the ingenious tax savvy have in common? Owe Sandström, that’s who. As the flamenco-dancing-zoologist-designer behind the costumes of ABBA, Sandström certainly played his part in helping the Swedish supergroup reach fame in the 1970s – where they have remained ever since. In fact, a deeper dive into the…

Wish You Were Here! The Golden Age of Holidays at Home on the English Riviera

Picture the scene: tricolour flags line the yacht-filled harbour, art-deco hotels dazzle the streets at night, celebrities flurry to villas hidden along the hillside that overlook lanes filled with chic cafés, where colourful tourists sip wine and smoke cigarettes at small bistro tables, while vintage cars are judged during the annual concours d’élégance and beautiful…

Has Coronavirus Killed the Menu? An Ode to the Restaurant Staple

Ah, Paris! Global capital of couture, style, and…menus? As café terraces welcome back patrons post-lockdown, it’s comes to the attention of our Paris team that tangible menus have gone digital across the city. Restaurants are displaying QR barcodes for customers to scan and access menus via their smartphones in order to avoid spreading les microbes.…

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…

Muse du Jour: What Happened to Shelley Duvall?

She was the woman wrapped in a fairytale. You may know her from classics like The Shining (1980) or Annie Hall (1977) or perhaps you know the sound of her warm voice saying, “Hello, I’m Shelley Duvall…” during the intro of a magical “Faerie Tale Theatre” TV hour she not only created, but hosted and…

The Lost Art of Hotel Luggage Labels

Hotel Select, still open. If a hotel told me they would slap one of these beautiful design labels onto my luggage upon checking in, I’d probably book a room just for that reason. There’s nothing more emblematic of the golden age of travel than these scrumptious stickers that came in all shapes, sizes, colours and…

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…

In the Grand Scheme of Things

As you can imagine, I collect a lot of images from the internet. And sometimes, I need to unload them to clear some space on the old laptop. So this is me, doing that, in a meaningful way. I hope you’ll find the theme of today’s spring clean larger than life… Above: A security guard walking down US…