Strange Objects of Desire: Victorian Glassware

If there’s one thing I’m almost certain about when it comes to Victorians–it’s that they had a heck of a lot of time on their hands. Without Instagram to fill those empty moments, Pinterest to procrastinate through their evenings or Netflix to swallow up their weekends, Victorians by default, were a pretty creative and curious bunch.…

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All Aboard the International Express, New York City

You can go to Paris for beauty school, and the Philippines for lunch. You can find your dream Diwali dress and a 200lb Ganesh statue on one block, then put your feet up at one of the best Chinese food emporiums in the world. The glory of New York has always been its diversity, but…

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A Brief Compendium of the Weirdest Stuff Sold Online (Like Your Soul).

The Internet, that “alien life form” as David Bowie decreed in a prophetic 1999 interview, has changed a lot in the past decade. The dial-up shriek is no more, AIM Bots are probably withering away in a black hole next to MySpace, and the glory days of weird eBay auctions are behind us. Or so…

A Kitschy Weekend Guide to the Australian Outback

We’ve got that itch for a little road trip once again, and this time it’s taking us to the Land Down Under, specifically, to the town of Broken Hill— no sandy beaches, no respite from a sun that (literally) shines longer and brighter than most places on earth, but it’s the keeper of some of…

The Music Your Plants Are Making in Secret

Think twice the next time you pluck a daisy from the sidewalk, because that flower may actually be ‘screaming’ in a language you don’t understand— or at least, not yet. Today, we’re cracking the code of the fascinating world of plant sentience, a.k.a., the secret way in which everything from your Ikea houseplant to a…

How to Outdo Every Halloween Costume at the Party

You don’t want to be that person at the costume party. You know, the one who’s scrawled some whiskers across their cheek to be a last minute black cat, or just turned up with a sheet over their head and declared it a costume. But we also aren’t ones for perusing overpriced, polyester outfits in a crowded…

One Last Shopping Spree at a New York Icon of Fashion

For 123 years, Camelot was on 5th Avenue, otherwise known as the Henri Bendel department store, the place to be for any fashionable woman worth her salt in 20th century America. So when the timeless Manhattan mainstay announced its imminent, forever closure this month, we kind of lost it. Needed a hat that looked like a…

The Secret Lives of Fashion Mannequins

For a brief moment in the 1930s, one of the most famous celebrities of the day was a 100-pound mannequin named Cynthia. She had box seats at the Metropolitan Opera, received freebies from Tiffany and Cartier, graced the cover of Life magazine and was even invited to the wedding of Edward V111 and Wallis Simpson.…

The Inexplicably Fascinating Japanese Art of Being Useless

“Not always useful, but not altogether useless” is the mantra behind Chindōgu, a Japanese art form that calls for stilettos with built-in umbrellas, noodle bibs for the face, and glue sticks filled with butter (that one we get). They’re nonsensical inventions on a mission, missing the mark of utility by a hair, and on purpose. “I…

Stop Everything, Check out this Forgotten Library For Sale

You know those movies set in a small town, where a bunch of local kids discover a murder mystery, try to solve it, and end up at the public library, scrolling through newspaper clippings from 50 years ago on the old microfilm machines. That’s how I imagine this library… The old Carnegie Library of Elwood…