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Cabinet of Chic Curiosities
Category / Movie / Music / Book Junkie

A Brief Compendium of the First Girl Groups, Forgotten in Music History

Before the Spice Girs, before Destiny’s Child and TLC, even before the Supremes, there was a litany of female singing groups – often found in threes, often known for their harmonic prowess, and often found on the great vaudeville stages of the time. They laid the foundation for the girl group as we know it…

6 Ways to Introduce Joan Didion to the Next Generation

Is it just us, or has Joan Didion become the go-to heroine for millennial and even Gen Z “cool girls”? Move over Jane Birkin – by declaring allegiance to the late American writer on social media, Didion brings instant credibility and style to one’s online persona – even if one has never read The White…

Vice Versa: America’s Gayest Magazine

Hollywood has a thing for origin stories at the moment, and one origin story in particular begins in Los Angeles, in an unassuming building on Gower Street, just off Melrose Avenue. This is not the origin story of a Marvel Comics character, or even of a Hollywood bigwig getting their own biopic. Now part of…

When in Rome, Discover Hollywood on the Tiber

Italian cinema is synonymous with hauntingly special silver screen moments, the stuff that flashbulb memories are made of. Who could possibly forget the larger than life screen goddess Anita Ekberg – all platinum locks, bare shoulders and curvaceous black dress in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita? Or the doe-eyed flamboyant gamine Audrey Hepburn on her…

The Femme Fatale who Rejected Frida Kahlo’s Marriage Proposal

The phrase ‘femme fatale’ must have been invented for ‘La Doña’ – diva of the golden age of Mexican cinema, María Félix. Strong-willed, outspoken, controversial and drop-dead gorgeous, her life story is that of a movie script, an escapee from desperate and humble beginnings, teenage beauty queen, silver screen actress with multiple marriages and even…

An Ode to the Card Catalog

Before books were easily printed and accessible to nearly everyone, before they even took the form of books specifically, there was a different story. Information was scarce in its written form, and so scribes and scholars developed a meticulous system for organizing libraries of tablets. That’s right: the oldest known form of organizing books predates…

Before There Was Emily in Paris, There Was Sally Jay Gorce

Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century and well into the beginning of the next, it’s easy to track our fascination with young women attempting to figure out life – they are witty, tenacious, and often keenly perceptive of the world in which they exist and their place within it. Their names have become…

The Third Man Guide to Vienna

Vienna is rightly regarded as one of Europe’s most elegant capital cities, resplendent with Baroque architecture and built upon centuries of the Imperial grandeur and wealth of the Hapsburg Empire. A city where visitors can spend a weekend marvelling at the Lipizzaner horses performing precise equine ballet at the Spanish Riding School before visiting the…

Her Comics were Everything Jim Crow America Never Wanted Black Women to Be

In the comic strip Torchy Brown from Dixie to Harlem, a spunky Black teenager leaves her Mississippi home for the bright lights of Harlem. She’s glamorous, ambitious, clever, and so self-assured that when she sees a sign pointing one way for COLORED and another way for WHITE, her response is, “I’ll just pretend I can’t…
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