Archive · In the Press · Mores · Pop Culture
Men's styles for autumn 1828 are rather varied, and the solicitous editor of the fashion journal explains that before us are sporting dress, a water costume and a festive suit. The sporting one is for riding, the festive one for an evening outing. And the "water"
Archive · Mores · People · Humour
There is a memory of Lilya Brik, recorded by the poetess Anna Said-Shah, from when Brik was 86. An Italian journalist who was visiting her at Peredelkino asked why she went to France rather than to Italy, which was every bit as good. Lilya replied that in Italy people
Monarchies · Observations · Mores
Queen Margrethe II of Denmark blows a kiss to her sister, Princess Benedikte of Denmark, outside Christiansborg Palace on the opening day of parliament. I adore the Danish royal family for their endearing habits, charming manners and such down-to-earth views. Even during the quarantine, Margrethe II sets an
Observations · Mores · Society Pages · Humour
As for antibodies, what stuck with me more was the remark of a stranger in the stalls, who explained why everyone (not quite everyone, of course, but the especially brazen) was going maskless. It is one thing when the Cossacks with their rifles go without masks: according to the text
Science · Mores · Paris · People
The French Pantheon once saw a joint burial, connected with the first woman admitted to that mausoleum, Sophie Berthelot, who in the scale of French history was remarkable only for being the faithful wife of the outstanding French physicist and chemist Pierre Marcellin Berthelot, familiar to us at least from
Archaeology · The East · Observations · Mores
My grandmother collected household textiles, and whenever I heard about wonderful Egyptian cotton, it seemed like yet another Soviet marketing prejudice, in the manner of unique Czechoslovak crystal and inimitable Chinese camel-hair blankets. After all, excellent crystal was also made in the Vladimir region, camel wool is the pride
NB! · Architecture · Moscow · Mores
Every flat in the Narkomfin Building has two front doors: one black, one white. One door gives onto the lower level, the other leads upstairs. The children, it must be said, make cheerful use of this original architectural solution, playing tag without, strictly speaking, ever leaving their own home, yet
Aristocracy · Archive · Art · Moscow · Mores
In the eighteenth century Russian aristocrats took to a new fashion: adopting orphans from the poorest classes. Many families took into their homes the children of non-Russian peoples and brought them up as their own. Pyotr Borisovich and Varvara Alexeyevna Sheremetev raised two Kalmyk girls, the cousins Annushka and
Monarchies · Observations · Mores · People
Other sources also report on the Potemkin villages, but the notorious villages of painted plywood did not lead Catherine astray: this was the ordinary practice of adorning a monarch's route, just as was the building of sumptuous wayside pavilions for the Russian empress's halts. To begin
London · Mores · Humour
eBay delights us with an authentic eighteenth-century sedan chair for £9,500. It is perhaps the closest historical analogue to Uber Black. In England such conveyances became popular from the 1630s and were called sedans, after the French town of Sedan, which specialised in the manufacture of covered litters.
Books · Monarchies · Observations · Mores
In light of the note on Leo Tolstoy, I recalled a passage from Daniil Granin's book "Evenings with Peter the Great", which unambiguously points to an intimate relationship between Peter Alexeyevich and Alexander Menshikov. I remember well the strong impression this episode made on me, all
Archive · Books · Mores · People
The first text is a diary entry of 29 November 1851, when Tolstoy was 23: “I have never been in love with women. <…> With men I have very often fallen in love: my first love was the two Pushkins, then the second, Saburov (?), then the third, Zybin and