“The Natural History of the Flirt,” by Albert Smith, published in 1848. This is just the kind of book that I would have flipped over while doing my research for Encyclopedia of the Exquisite. But it’s never to late to…
California Girls
Though women in Hawaii had been surfing for centuries, Gidget, aka Kathy Kohner of Brentwood, California, sparked a revolution among millions of American teenager girls who dreamt of surfing—not just watching the guys surf—in the late 1950s. As a 15 year-old,…
Relatively Delightful
With the fashion collections just around the corner, it seems an appropriate moment to pay homage to Charles Baudelaire, fashion’s first poet, who recognized that fashion is integral to portraying modern times in art, and who swans his way through…
Screen Goddess
Out of all the big time movie stars who’ve played the role of Cleopatra, Claudette Colbert was the queen among the queens of the Nile. In each biopic, pageantry, major jewelry, passion, dancing girls, outrageous headgear and sexy eveningwear have…
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