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Category / Fashion for Dummies

The Puerto Rican Playboy who Ruled Fashion in the Decades of Decadence

To be one of “Antonio’s Girls”, as they were known, meant you were going places. You had “it”. Grace Jones, Jerry Hall, Tina Chow, Pate Cleveland and Jessica Lange are names that are much better known today than Antonio Lopez, but they were all key members of his unofficial talent school whose careers he launched…

The Secret Code of Beauty Spots

You’re looking at a very rare portrait from 1650 depicting a Black woman and a White woman, both appearing to hold equal status, some 183 years before the abolition of slavery act. Curiously, rather than commenting on the race debate in 17th century Britain via the uncommon pairing, the anonymous artist chose to write an…

The Lost Art and Innovation of Milk Plastic

Got milk? Pour yourself a glass and gulp down some little-known history about the household staple. In the early decades of the 20th century, milk was commonly used to make many plastic ornaments, including jewellery, gemstones, buttons, decorative buckles, fountain pens, fancy comb and brush sets and even piano keys. Milk plastic was even used to adorn Chanel’s…

Struck with Style: Lightning Rod Fashion of the 18th Century

Unfathomably whacky fashions have seen the light over the ages. Take the perilous hobble skirt of the early 1910s that deliberately impeded its wearer’s ability to walk, or the gentleman’s codpiece that drew eyes to his genital area for most of 16th century Europe. We’ve dug up yet another surprising fashion trend of yore courtesy…

From Corsets to Culottes: The Women who Dared to Change Wimbledon

Wimbledon today is known for showcasing the tennis talents of both male and female competitors, but in the tournament’s earlier days, one does wonder how women were expected to make a decent serve dressed in full-length skirts, corsets, and fiddly blouses: the ‘tennis whites’ of the time. It took some real champions to make a…

Fashion’s Forgotten Bébé

Fabulous, free and fashionable, France bloomed in the 1930s. The avant-garde arts flourished, Paris was at the centre of it all and her output was bountiful. The creative giants of the day, Picasso, Cocteau, Coco Chanel, May Ray, Beauvoir and Sartre, the Lost Generation and their cultural circle basked in a warm summer evening’s glow…

Starved of a Realistic Female Body Image? Flesh & Curves this way…

Hi there. Don’t be shy, yes that’s a boobie and a curvy waist you just saw, we’re going to be looking at a lot of those in a moment. For a few minutes today, I thought I’d give you a little time-out from what we’re used to being brainwashed with exposed to all over the…

Marge Simpson, the Style Icon

With that towering head of blue hair, we tend to forget that Marge Simpson has a killer body – for a bright yellow cartoon character, that is. So what better way to show off those famous Simpson curves than have her recreate some of the most memorable moments in fashion history? Italian illustrator, AleXsandro Palombo,…

A Photographer’s Forgotten Muse on the French Riviera

There was definitely something about Renée. When the legendary French photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue met her while strolling the streets of Paris in 1930, he fell in love instantly. Tall, chic and hiding coquettishly under a wide elegant hat, he nicknamed her the ‘parasol’. Together they embarked on what Lartigue remembers as an “eternal vacation”, a dreamlike two-year holiday in the…
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