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Cabinet of Chic Curiosities

America’s Hidden “Mad Men” Age of Black Advertising

Style and smiles all-round, saturated to the max; sexy undertones complete with sexist overtones and carefree capitalism – those iconic mid-century advertisements weren’t just unique to the magazine pages of white America. In the 1950s and ’60s, the notorious advertisers of Madison Avenue, aka the real-life “Mad Men”, courted African American dollars too. Unbeknownst to…

Savour the Date with Post-Pandemic Weddings of the Roaring 20s

A century ago, the world was recovering from the deadliest pandemic in modern history. Post-Spanish Influenza and post-World War I, no other decade in history can match the change and innovation brought forth by the 1920s. Things were changing fast – new and impressive lines of communication were opening up, with new fangled inventions such…

Inside the Mystery of an Untranslatable 600 Year Old Book

It’s like Medieval Times, with a kiss of psychedelia. A book in which strange globules float freely, alien plants shimmy across the pages, and female figures slide into a pool of green plasma. Binding them all together? A beautiful, albeit entirely indecipherable script by an unknown author. The “Voynich Manuscript,” is an ancient codex that…

Oh, Just the World’s Tiniest (Hand-Knitted) Sweaters

One Size Fits None for Althea Crome, the fiber artist who has been knitting miniature – and micro-mini – sweaters fit for a size range that we’ll just call “ladybug (XS) to mouse (XL).” As if knitting a 5mm turtleneck wasn’t hard enough, Crome’s designs are often imbued with varied, intricate artistic symbols inspired by…

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

1. An Entire Old West Town for Sale in New Zealand A detailed replica of an 1860s Wyoming frontier town, set in the heart of a 900-acre ranch has gone up for sale with an asking price of $7.5 million. Found on Bloomberg. 2. French Revolutionary Frescoes Discovered behind the Walls of a Paris Apartment…

Wait, Why Did Men Stop Wearing Hats?

Let’s play a little game of Where’s Waldo? Only, with men who aren’t wearing hats in the above photograph. It raises the question: where have all the elegant fedoras, bowlers, news caps, and top hats gone? Hats have had a role to play for most of our history, walking the line between the utilitarian, decorative,…

Our Date with Diane Pernet, the Internet’s First High Priestess of Fashion

Crowned as the “original fashion blogger” by the New York Times, Diane Pernet has long been a one of a kind, spellbinding presence in the industry. She has filled so many roles – designer, filmmaker, curator, journalist and influencer (in the truest sense of the word) – that it’s impossible to reduce her work to…

He Dreamt of an African Utopia with Fantastic Futuristic Cities

During his lifetime, Congolese sculptor Bodys Isek Kingelez, did not have a commercial art dealer to represent his work. The self-taught visionary reimagined glittering global capitals for a post-colonial Africa, and made hundreds of “extreme” miniature architectural models throughout his career, which was cut short in 2015 following his battle with cancer. A few years…

An Arctic Seaside Town they call “The Paris of the North”

As the mainstream media continues to ask if this is “the end of tourism”, wondering how they’ll reinvent an industry that does so much damage, we thought we’d just pick up where we left off before the pandemic; pointing to off-beat destinations and sticking by our longtime motto: Don’t be a Tourist. Today, we’re pointing…

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

1. Academy Theater, Inglewood California, 1940 Still standing, screened movies from 1933 until it became a church in 1975. It got it’s name “The Academy Theater” because it was originally built to be the home and venue for the Academy Awards (the Oscars). But the plans changed. Photographed by Julius Shulman, found here. 2. ‘Sciopticon’…
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