Weekend Conversation Starters

[Messy Nessy Chic]   I’m feeling a little left out. Unless you’ve been living on a different planet without WiFi this week, you most certainly came across the “Ten Year Challenge”, encouraging people to share then-and-now photos of themselves, which resulted in a proverbial flash mob of self-indulgent social media posts. Now, technically, MessyNessyChic doesn’t qualify to enter the challenge, being one year shy of 10 years-old. But like I said, I’m feeling a little left out. So before we get to your weekend conversation starters, I thought I’d offer up my own version of the #10YearChallenge and dig up some embarrassing articles from (almost) 10 years ago in 2010 when MessyNessyChic was just a wee thing. What I found was quite telling... You can step inside my self-centered little world when I had just moved to Paris in [I’m A Bit Of A Loner in Paris but That’s Ok With Me](. Then we see my burgeoning interest in French culture and blossoming penchant for time travel in [The Women Behind Gainsbourg](. This was apparently also around the time I was discovering my love for thrifting and decided to ask: [Where Does All Our Vintage Clothing Come From?](– which isn’t half bad as an investigative piece, if I do say so myself! I was also “Style Spying” as you’ve come to know it on [Instagram]( today, way back then in [Parisian Style on a Sunday Afternoon]( (on the Champs Elysées of all places– how will I ever live it down?) Lastly, I found MessyNessyChic’s first forgotten muse, Marchesa Luisa Casati (aka [The Original Lady Gaga](). You’ll notice I didn’t quite have the blog layout quite figured out yet!  So there you have it, laid bare. These early articles represent the makings of MNC as it stands today: the good, the bad and the ugly. In truth, I found this much more satisfying than looking at awkward old photographs of myself. This weekend, why not dig up some old diaries, scrapbooks or first blog posts? I highly recommend it, along with your weekend conversation starters... With love from Paris then & now, [Nessy]   [Oh, just an Utterly Insane Ghost City of Fake French Chateaux](   [05_villas]( This is not Photoshop. I repeat, this is not Photohop. Ever heard of “duplitecture”? It’s the term that’s been coined to describe replica architecture which has been popping up all over China since the 1990s (and let’s not forget Las Vegas either), where iconic landmarks and entire towns are constructed using lower-quality building materials to clone centuries…  [Continue Reading](   [Greetings from Rabbi Shaul’s Sacred Taxidermy Museum, Brooklyn, NY](   [Screenshot 2019-01-17 at 19.49.06]( It’s a day like any other in Borough Park, Brooklyn. Yiddish-painted school buses go to-and-from, and women tighten the tichels around their heads; every man is silhouetted by a pair of perfectly curled sideburns, and the local grocer has a two-for-one deal on blintzes. Tel-Aviv notwithstanding, the Big Apple is home to our planet’s largest Hasidic…  [Continue Reading](   [Get Schooled by the World’s First Sexology Institute of 1920s Berlin](   [47586419_360632811386457_1884234923355668480_n]( They called him “the Einstein of Sex”. The German doctor who went (quite literally) where no other had gone before in his research, founding the massive Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or Sexology, just before the Nazis eclipsed bohemian Berlin and its costumed, sexually liberated splendour. His name was Magnus Hirschfeld (see the dude with the glasses…  [Continue Reading](   [Vacationing at the Edge of a Giant Hole in the Earth](   [6cnocs12zj311]( You might have seen photographs around on the web of this giant hole that’s so big it can be seen from space (and very likely takes you straight to the devil’s basement). But have you ever wondered what actually exists around a godforsaken place like this? What’s daily life like? And can you find a decent…  [Continue Reading](   [Misadventures of the Psychedelic ’60s Starlet Who Tried to Spike Nixon’s Drink](   [nixonlsd]( Grace Slick is the the psychedelic queen who didn’t give a f**k– literally, she was the first to say the word on American television when she sang it in a song with her rock band, Jefferson Airplane. She was Janis Joplin’s drinking buddy, a talented songwriter with a wicked sense of humour, and the woman who plotted…  [Continue Reading](   [Catherine Deneuve Wants to Sell You Her Parisian Wardrobe](   [CATHERINEDENEUVE]( Spring cleaning came early for French cinema icon Catherine Deneuve, who says she’s just got no more room in her closet in Normandy (relatable!), so she’s auctioning off her perfectly Parisian, Yves Saint Laurent wardrobe. Now for fashion lovers, this is the Holy Grail of hauls. But even if you don’t care about clothes, you…  [Continue Reading](   [13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CCCXXXVI)](   [0-29]( 1. The ‘Hippiedilly’ Squat on Hyde Park Corner in 1969 Found on Flashbak.  2. The British Library has a collection of over 60 million newspapers stored in an airtight, low-oxygen room The latest, state-of-the-art facility featuring robotic cranes to retrieve newspapers from shelving that are 20 metres (65 feet) high.  [Continue Reading](   [The Legend of the Sun King’s Perfume Bath at Versailles](   [4703009259_2b7afba40b_b]( We’ve taken a bath in front of the Eiffel Tower, in the middle of a desert, and even seen a bath tub on wheels. But for all our apparent interest in unconventional bathing, we’d never heard about Louis XIV’s luxurious perfume bath. In a ritual so over the top– even for the French Sun King– Louis…  [Continue Reading](  Interested in Becoming a MessyNessyAmbassador? 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