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Cabinet of Chic Curiosities

Category / Nostalgia

The Radical History of Women Smoking

We don’t really need a reminder of just how bad smoking is for us. Bad for our physical health, the environment, and cringe-worthy on so many social justice levels. Why is it then, that women always looked so damn cool smoking their cigarettes in vintage photographs? There’s a complicated blend between our lifetime exposure to…

All Aboard! The Lost Romance of the Sleeper Train

Books, songs and movies have long-romanticised what it’s like to travel overnight on a sleeper train. Julie Garland took us on a musical ride along the Santa Fe Railway in The Harvey Girls, while Bing Crosby and company whisked us across the American plains to the mountains of Vermont aboard a beautifully vintage streamliner train…

Doomsday Prepping in the Belle Epoque

Ah, to have planned for a comet apocalypse in the Belle Epoque! Looks like a wild time, according to all the 19th and 20th century postcards with folks soaring through the skies, bum over noggin, towards a starry death. Out of all the (ultimately) anti-climactic close comet calls, the 1910 approach of Halley’s Comet takes…

Nearly 50 Years On, a Forbidden Seaside Ghost Town is about to Re-Open

Imagine a millionaire’s resort; one to rival St. Tropez, Italy’s Portofino, or Miami’s South Beach – abandoned overnight. Imagine the luxury hotels suddenly emptied of their guests and left to slowly decay, the boutiques, bars and nightclubs reclaimed by nature, sunbathers replaced by sea turtles nesting on the deserted beaches and the once vibrant holiday…

Let’s Window Shop for French Fairytale Homes

Chateaux hunting is a veritable mood right now – the idea of quitting urban life, recruiting your best friends to go all in on the adventure and living out the rest of your days fixing up your French fortress with an endless supply of wine & cheese. There is certainly no shortage of chateaux in…

If Fanny Packs made a comeback, surely the Parasol Can Too

For the average person, stepping out with an elegant sun parasol in western society today would probably feel like stepping out in cosplay. You might as well be wearing a corset too. Sadly, not since our grandparent’s generation has carrying a parasol been commonplace, but akin to the disappearance of men’s hats from everyday fashion,…

The Black Woman’s Forgotten Fight against the Laws that Banned her Hair

There are many reasons why it’s not “just hair” for Black women. Before the “Black is Beautiful” and natural hair movement emerged during the 1960s, anti-Black hair sentiment in Western society existed for centuries, most contentiously in colonial Louisiana when a series of laws actually banned Creole women from displaying their hair in public. Introduced…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CDXCXXII)

1. Barbie’s Real-Life California Dream House (For Sale) Asking $5,999,000, found on Sotheby’s Realty. 2. Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights, 1490 – 1510 Found on Tumblr. 3. Pages from the sexual and existential cookbook of Dorothy Iannone, 1969 Discover more of her work here. 4. Now we can virtually tour the tomb of…

Float Away with a Forgotten Futurist’s Vision of Paris

Paris was destined to be a city enjoyed from great heights; the Arc de Triomphe a mere pedestal for a mini city in the sky and the gothic bell towers of Notre Dame a convenient launching pad for fish-like dirigibles to whizz around town in. That is, according to fantastical world of Albert Robida, a…

He Found an Entire House in his Attic

I’m not scared, you’re scared! We were casually scrolling through Reddit the other day when we stumbled upon the most interesting if not creepiest thing we’ve ever seen posted on the platform… A Redditor who goes by the username “Mr Griff” shared photographs over the weekend of a recent excursion up to his attic where…

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