15 49.0138 8.38624 both 0 bullet 0 4000 1 0 horizontal https://www.messynessychic.com 300 4000

Category / People / Icons / Muses

Deep in Italy, One Man’s Surrealist Mini-City Sleeps

It’s a labyrinthine citadel more surreal than even the weirdest of Fellini sets. “La Scarzuola” is a modern wannabe-Utopian estate imagined by one man and built amongst the pointy trees of Italy’s Montegabbione in the 1950s. This esoteric wonderland and its elaborate surrealist structures are awaiting your visit… Echoing the dreamlike worlds of Dali and…

How Monarchs and Their Mistresses Avoided the Walk of Shame

There’s no denying that history’s juiciest stories often have roots in-between the sheets, and as general rule, whether you were ruler of the kingdom or head of the Catholic church, having multiple lovers still required a serious escape route to avoid any unnecessary embarrassment. Ever intrigued by a secret passageway or a hidden staircase, we’ve compiled…

The Last Palace of the Champs Elysées: A Courtesan’s Secret Alcazar

Hiding in plain sight, you’re looking into the eye of the last remaining example of the magnificent private mansions that once lined the Champs Élysées in Paris. Hotel de la Païva was built by a famous 19th century courtesan who came from humble beginnings in the ghetto of Moscow. Esther Lachmann, aka La Païva, became…

Before Björk, There Was the Last Incan Princess

She claimed to be the final descendant of the last Incan Emperor, Atahualpa — a claim the Peruvian government backed in 1946 — and she allegedly learned to sing from “the creatures of the forest.” Yma Sumac didn’t just hit octaves. She knocked them out of the park with a growl, and took them for…

The Master and his Muse who Outdid the Mona Lisa

It’s a breezy day in 1950s Cape Town. Monika Pon-su-san is busy serving a customer in her uncle’s laundromat when a curly-haired, angel-faced stranger walks through the door. Vladimir Tretchikoff’s gaze is fixated on her – an exquisite young beauty with lustrous dark hair, full lips and a shy smile. He needs to paint her.…

When Big Brands were Getting High in the Seventies

In the late 1960s and 70s, America’s big corporations could see the psychedelic writing on the wall and they knew they had to do something. A wave of psychedelia was taking over pop culture and the LSD-infused hippie aesthetic was huge. The influence of drug culture on some of the most iconic brands saw everyone…

Meet the Godfather of Voguing

Willi Ninja did far more than “strike a pose”. Before Madonna was Voguing for the masses on MTV in 1990, the niche dance form was being created by black and latino drag queens during the ballroom era of 1960’s Harlem, New York. It was Willi Ninja, an ambitious young dancer, who pioneered Voguing, and used it to…

Our Zoom Date Backstage at the Natural History Museum in London

James Maclaine has been working at the Natural History Museum in London since the late 90s. He pretty much had the whole place to himself during the lockdowns, caring for thousands of specimens including the museum’s mind-boggling collection of pickle jars, some of which contain creatures that date to the voyages of Charles Darwin. We were…

Ask Me Anything: An Internet Q&A with the Guy who was Swallowed by a Whale

You might have caught the story about a lobster diver from Provincetown who was swallowed by a humpback whale off Cape Cod last week – and lived to tell the tale. The idea of swirling around inside the jaws of the ocean’s most legendary creature conjures up all sorts of aquatic childhood fables, from Moby…

Get Schooled by the World’s First Sexology Institute of 1920s Berlin

They called him “the Einstein of Sex”. The German doctor who went (quite literally) where no other had gone before in his research, founding the massive Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or Sexology, just before the Nazis eclipsed bohemian Berlin and its costumed, sexually liberated splendour. His name was Magnus Hirschfeld (see the dude with the glasses…

NEWER POSTS 1 … 34 35 36 … 83 OLDER POSTS