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Cabinet of Chic Curiosities
Category / Nostalgia

Where are the Black Archeologists?

“Why are there so few Black American archeologists?” asked Maria Franklin in response to a landmark 1997 survey which found that only 2 out of 1500 Archeological respondents identified as Black. Years later, the status of her question posed in a paper published by the Cambridge University Press in 2015 – and its answer –…

This Abandoned School became his Personal Mansion (but you’re invited)

Okay, this probably sounds creepier than it really is. In Japan’s Iya Valley, considered one of the country’s most beautiful but unexplored regions, a remote elementary school was abandoned for nearly a decade, before Yohei Aoki came along and made it his home. Since 2017, the former office worker has also been welcoming off-beat travellers…

An Ode to what they call “Duck Architecture”

Now I know. Did you? There’s an official name for all those kitschy roadside buildings shaped like the merchandise they’re selling. Most popular in the 1920s and 30s, giant coffee pots, hot dogs, ice cream cones, beer barrels, farm animals and other eye-catching buildings sprang up along the roadside, competing for the attention of passing…

Before Playboy, Came “La Vie Parisienne”

A pair of clandestine, gender-bending lovers are about to embrace at la brasserie. A fashionable young woman in a barely-there dress is partying the night away in the cabarets of Paris without a care (or a man) in the world to ruin her fun. A curious eye would be intrigued by the risqué illustrations of…

America’s Lost Towns of Black Affluence

Going into this, I don’t think I was prepared at all for how un-unique the story of Florida’s Sugar Hill neighbourhood really was. In the 1950s and 60s, the once upper class and prestigious Black community of Sugar Hill in Jacksonville, was chosen by city officials to be levelled to make way for a multi-lane…

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…
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