Messy Nessy Chic

Let's take a tour of Jean Cocteau's tatted villa...

Why Not Tattoo Your Walls like the French? Jean Cocteau's Villa Santo Sospir. ©barlowandbarlow / Instagram At this very moment, a drunken Dionysus naps in the doorway of a villa overlooking the French Riviera. In another room, the head of…

Leap into the legacy of Parisian rooftops

The Art & Origins of Running Across Paris Rooftops © Ben Cante For those with a fear of heights, consider this your one and only warning to avert your eyes. For those who can't look away, join us on the rooftops of Paris, where we'd like to start by…

When the teacher's lines were eclipsed by the pupil's fame

Moonlight Etchings of the Forgotten Artist who Taught Edward Hopper Martin Lewis died in obscurity in 1962; a retired art teacher who had found some success in his early career, but was largely forgotten after the Great Depression took away the demand for his craft,…

Have you heard the term “Kindergarten Kitsch”

North Korean Interiors Looking Suspiciously like a Wes Anderson Film Set I'm quite sure this room reminds me of a new design restaurant I went to recently and thought was so cool, that I didn't really care what the food tasted like or how much they were charging me for…

Here’s why Spandau Ballet deserves a far more significant space in your vintage reference library…

The Fashion Anatomy of Spandau Ballet Spandau Ballet © Corbis The swashbuckling frilly shirts, waist-cinching belts, man brooches, contouring make-up, jodhpurs and jack boots – was Spandau Ballet the most underrated fashion statement of…

Did you know that a glass sponge could live as long as 15,000 years?

The Ocean is Full of Wonders We Barely Understand. Sponges are one of them. Ernst Haeckel - Kunstformen der Natur (1904), plate 5: Calcispongiae Did you know that a glass sponge could live as long as 15,000 years? They could probably live up to 40,000 years if changing sea…

Let’s take a little trip down memory lane...

New York's Incredible Lost Rooftop Theatres There are some things we've lost that I'll never understand. Midcentury automobile design comes to mind, as well as piano bars & cocktail lounges on our airplanes, hand-painted typography and…

For afternoons best spent behind drawn curtains and a fan.

13 Movies for a Nostalgic European Summer I grew up spending summers in a little country village in the south of France where nothing ever really happened. To romanticise those hot, sleepy days, I spent many hours devouring movies in the…

What if your city grew like a forest? would you still want a corner office or a treehouse?

Inside the Imaginarium of a Solarpunk Architect Imagine a world in which nature is intertwined with the industrial: giant lotus flowers replace concrete skyscrapers; an urban forest forms a city constantly in shift through a tree’s life cycle.…

An elixir of youth, a sexual stimulator and mental health cure all in one?

He made a Fortune in the 1920's Transplanting Monkey Testicle Tissue into the Ballsacks of Millionaires Artwork by Letters & Liquor The poet E.E Cummings once wrote of a "famous doctor who inserts monkey glands in millionaires" and in a pre-code Hollywood musical starring the Marx Brothers, they sang…