Proud WWII Pilots Modelling their Personalised Flight Jackets

They all had them; the standard A-2 flight jacket that every soldier was issued during the war, but I could never really imagine these tough, battle-worn guys sitting around, designing and doodling their own customised bombers. While some were clearly made professionally and some were homemade while killing time in between the action, here’s a fantastic collection of photographs from…

Twisted Treasures: The Quirky World of Telephone Cord Bag Collecting

We love a fashion moment wrapped in a mystery, which is precisely what happened when fate, or chance, or whatever, first brought us to our dream handbag. There, in the sea musty bins at the Brooklyn Flea, it glimmered: a purse made up of cream coloured coils…dare we say, telephone cords? It was bold, campy,…

Once Upon a Time in Krakow at the Old Jewish Quarter Café

Once Upon a Time in Kazimierz, a little restaurant in the heart of Krakow’s old Jewish ghetto, is better than most museums. Set inside a row of recreated, turn-of-the-19th-century Jewish traders’ shops, it’s arguably one of the smallest restaurants in the city, with eleven candlelit tables offering a dining experience from another century, like walking into…

Where the Nazis Hung Out in Occupied Paris

Today I found a photograph of an ordinary German coffee shop circa 1941, with German signage above the windows that read “Soldatenkaffee Madeleine“. What made this photograph of a coffee shop so very unordinary, was that it was not taken in Germany, but on the Place de la Madeleine in Paris during the Nazi occupation. How many other places like…

Vintage Japanese Advertising Could Sell Us Anything

The foamiest men’s shampoo to make bath-time oodles more fun? The latest must-have make-up for your back? Whatever they were selling, we would’ve been buying. If you were in post-WWII Japan, your eyeballs had the luck of watching the advertising world grow brighter, hipper, and (especially in the ’80s) weirder. From the surreal visuals and zany…

The Mad, Mad Love of Man Ray & Lee Miller

She was the model and artist turned war correspondent. He was one of Surrealism’s most iconic figures. Together, Lee Miller and Man Ray lived a fiery romance, set to the backdrop of 1930s Paris. So naturally, we’re keen to relive their story… Miller was discovered by Condé Montrose Naste (yes, that Condé Naste) at 19 in…

Found: A German Soldier’s WWII Scrapbook

There’s something enchanting about coming across an old scrapbook; more than just a photo album, a lovingly put together book of ephemera can be a unique window into a life lived elsewhere. We previously found a marvellous one once at the Brooklyn Flea Market, made by an aspiring young actress in the 1930s making her…

The First Parisian Skyscrapers were also a Notorious World War II Jewish Camp

A relatively austere low-income housing complex in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, the Cité de la Muette is not a remarkable collection of buildings. At first glance, it’s a council estate like any other, where residents go about their daily business seemingly unfazed by the history that lies both within its walls and beneath them.…

Digging Up Egypt’s Not So Ancient WWII Surrealist Movement

Cairo, 1938. Around 140,000 British troops occupied the city, and World War II was ready to burst. Thirty-seven artists and writers gathered to fight against a rising Fascist ideology, British colonial rule, and the local conservative art scene. The first inklings of Surrealism already simmered under Egypt’s troubled surface, as artists and writers corresponded with…

Unsung Heroes of WWII: The All-Female WASP Squad

Where there’s a will, there’s a way — but for pilot Jacqueline Cochrane, there had to be even more. “To live without risk, for me,” she said, “would be tantamount to death.” One of the biggest risks of her career was pioneering the US organisation, WASPS (Women Airforce Service Pilots). In the heat of WWII,…