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

Cabinet of Chic Curiosities

Category / How to start a subculture

October 31, 2018

Interview with a Vampire in Paris

It was a dark and stormy night – or, at least, I had hoped it would be. The quaint and sleepy residential streets appeared an unseemly location for some of the most terrifying creatures imaginable to reside, until I arrived at a rusted cast iron gate overrun with foliage that also claimed every inch of garden…

October 26, 2018

Rocky Horror Picture Show in the Paris Catacombs

For our latest adventure on the Don’t be a Tourist in Paris web series, we go 30 feet beneath the city to discover the subculture of iconic midnight movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show just in time for Halloween. Below ground, we’re in the subterranean cinema of Alexander J E Bradley a photographer, filmmaker and catacomb-dweller (aka. cataphile).…

October 17, 2018

Painting the Apocalypse

Wow, where is that? I thought leaning in closer to my screen, squinting at the ghostly concrete towers. It wasn’t until I actually saved the image to my computer and put it through Google reverse image search, that I actually realised, I wasn’t looking at a photograph. This is the work of Simon Stålenhag– and if you’ve…

October 10, 2018

What Happened to the Other Muses of Andy Warhol?

“One person in the ’60s fascinated me more than anybody I had ever known,” wrote Andy Warhol in his 1977 autobiography, From A to B and Back Again, “And the fascination I experienced was probably very close to a certain kind of love.” He never gets more explicit, preferring instead to steep in that infamous brand of Warholian…

October 9, 2018

Invasion of the Kitschy Carpets

Don’t worry, you’re not tripping. Give your eyes another rub, and you’ll realise you’re just being momentarily hypnotised by the felted creations of Makoto Egashira, the Japanese artist with a Midas touch. Only, swap the gold for your granny’s gaudy carpeting. From pineapples, to rocking chairs, teacups, even entire bathrooms and groups of people — nothing…

October 2, 2018

Don’t Mess With the Jiu-jitsu Suffragettes

It’s Edwardian Era Glasgow, circa 1914, and the stress mounting in St. Andrews’s Hall is unbearable. Flocks of Suffragettes and policemen are waiting for the woman of the hour, Emmeline Pankhurst, to magically surface and fight against her own arrest — the tension is so palpable, you could cut it with a knife. Or karate-chop…

September 21, 2018

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…

August 28, 2018

How to Make an American Anti-Hero

They crusaded with horns sprouting from their heads, and rifles slung across their backs. Legend has it they decreed the virtues of the Holy Bible in one hand, and a torch in the other. They were known as the “Bald Knobbers,” and for a period of time in the lawless Ozark Mountains of post-Civil War…

August 8, 2018

Once Upon a Summer in Black Eden…

Today, the glory days of Idlewild feel a bit like a fever dream. Just ask any of the African American vacationers who made the pilgrimage to the Michigan resort from the 1910s-60s. “It was something that you’d never believe…stranger than fiction,” reflects one woman in Coy Davis Jr.’s documentary, Whatever Happened to Idlewild? In the midst of Jim…

August 7, 2018

How One Frenchman Became the World’s Most Beloved Lesbian Poet

We thought we’d heard it all when it came to imposters. Clearly, we hadn’t met Pierre Louÿs. The French writer had Europe’s literary scene eating out of the palm of his hand, and was decorated as a Chevalier and Officier de la Légion d’honneur in his lifetime, two of his country’s highest honours, that would never have been awarded…