NB! · Archive · Mores · People · Pop Culture
A little fishing in Scotland, skiing in Saint-Moritz: such were the weekends of Coco Chanel, photographed for the February 1931 issue of the magazine l’Art vivant. The photographs are by Germaine Krull, very popular in those years.
Architecture · Observations · Paris · Pop Culture
Louis Vuitton, as ever, on an unattainable height. I do not know how I contrived to miss this news in January, when Virgil Abloh presented at the Louis Vuitton show during Paris Fashion Week two three-dimensional capes bearing architectural monuments, as part of the autumn-winter menswear collection. One
Architecture · Moscow · Pop Culture · Society Pages
At the Old Stock Greenhouse in the Botanical Garden of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the presentation of Roma Uvarov's new upcycled collection. The building is phenomenal, dating from the late 1940s, the core of its plant collection came from the Potsdam greenhouse, received in 1947, and the
Faith · Books · Observations · Pop Culture
I heard Armstrong's "Let My People Go" on Radio Monte Carlo. It was Paul Robeson, however, who first performed this spiritual, and his voice came, in this connection, to be called divine. How many times have you sung along to these rhythmic bars without a thought
NB! · Archive · Science · Pop Culture · Humour
In the future you will be able to carry a telephone in your pocket. A prediction from 1963
Cinema · Observations · Pop Culture · Society Pages
The other day I attended the premiere of Ksenia Zueva's film "Intervention" with Anna Chipovskaya, who plays a girl in difficult life circumstances. It was most unusual to see Anna in a new guise, at least to my eye: that of an ordinary girl from our
Cinema · Books · Observations · Pop Culture
The recently released trailer for "Pishcheblok" once again draws attention to Russian television series: it looks intriguing, stylish and atmospheric. The makers have plainly succeeded in recreating the atmosphere of the Soviet era. For those who are not well versed in our contemporary literature, this is an adaptation
In the Press · Cinema · Books · Pop Culture · Saint Petersburg
The recent, almost viral surge of interest in the occasionally hilarious and thoroughly un-Peter-Jacksonian television adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, as staged by Leningrad television in the 1990s, has raised a question of sorts: is it really so surprising that citizens of the USSR were acquainted
Archive · Monarchies · Mores · Pop Culture
British model Poppy Delevingne has shared on Instagram a family story, accompanied by a photograph of her grandmother with the seventeen-year-old Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, on holiday in Venice in 1936. According to the family recollection, her grandmother said she understood at once that this young
NB! · In the Press · Observations · Pop Culture
Faith · Art · Pop Culture
A very small allegorical portrait of Saint Jerome, 47 x 40 cm, by the young Van Dyck sold at auction in Switzerland for 2.4 million francs (that is, 2.2 million euros) against an estimate of 600,000-800,000 euros. It is one of several Van Dyck depictions
Interviews · Cinema · Monarchies · Observations · People · Pop Culture
On 11 April Netflix will show Princess Diana's scandalous and notorious BBC interview of 20 November 1995, watched by 23 million people. It was spoken of as "the interview that shook the world". Twenty-six years have passed, and it is still not entirely clear why