Meet Me After Class

Your trusty internet distractions and inspirations curated by Nessy.

I love to find a good Paris photo story that I haven’t seen before, and this one that I found buried in the LIFE archives is a quite the treat. Veteran photographer for the magazine Loomis Dean followed a group of young students in 1961, getting an intimate peek into their lives as they pursued the bohemian dream in mid-century Paris.

A real literary club in Paris that inspired a lifestyle collection with French heritage brand, Figaret. Once a month, our Left Bank boutique transforms into the "Paris Writers & Readers Club", a creative candlelit haven after hours for writers and readers to share ideas, readings, and the simple joy of human connection over a glass of wine. For each salon, Nessy invites a special guest author to lead the salon with a reading and answer questions about their work, their process and experience as a writer.

Perhaps the last thing you want to do on holiday is “go back to school”, but I can assure you, this little schoolhouse nestled in the picturesque province of Vicenza, a 90 minute drive from Venice, is nothing like the school days you remember. No grumpy Maths teachers, no caféteria slop for lunch and certainly no homework is involved in a stay at La Scuola Lusiana Guesthouse…

As night fell on Cambridge University in the 1930s, a dapper gang of undergraduate students regularly met in secret to climb up historical buildings, illegally exploring their campus via its rooftops and façades. They were known as the “Night Climbers of Cambridge”, immortalised in a cult guide book on the forbidden practice, anonymously published by the daredevil you see in the photograph above.

What if I told you there was an elite college as exclusive as Harvard and as remote as the North Pole? That it consistently tops Harvard’s yield rate and evades suspicions of being a cult, that it requires its students to engage in 20 hours of manual labor per week and doesn’t let them leave without express permission?

Man has worn fur since he was living in a cave, but there’s something about this photograph and the fresh-faced young men, all “pimped-out” in full-length fur that stopped me in my tracks. I had stumbled upon a snapshot of a moment in fashion history when American Ivy league-ers and young college undergrads began sporting heavy, full-length raccoon coats, which set the trend in 1920s & 30s men’s fashion and sparked a voracious demand for the extravagant garment across the country. If a man could afford a fur coat, he had one; bankers, salesmen and students alike used the style to signify or improve their social status.

Even if you can’t join our literary club in Paris, you can join us via Zoom remotely and sport the club uniform all year round.

We miss the days when estheticians waxed eyebrows in a Paul Bunyan-ready cottage, perfected their perming skills in a nondescript clapboard shack, and barbers painted their 1969 Volkswagens to match their salon. More than mere institutions for a cute ‘do, the beauty schools and barber shops of yesteryear were visible extensions of major cultural shifts. WWII saw the working woman opt for a shorter haircut. When it ended, the ponytail came in full-swing, along with Elvis’ pelvic thrust, only to come undone again in the ’60s and ’70s when everyone discovered mushrooms, before moving on to high perms, Reagan, and RoboCop. These aren’t buildings. They’re keepers of history.

This old black and white photograph pops out at me every now and again on the internet, and it just about sums up my feelings on what my education should have looked like. The photograph was taken in 1957 in the Netherlands where open air schools were quite popular at the time. The idea of an al fresco classroom should be a very obvious one if the weather permits it, but unfortunately, most traditional western schools these days don’t put much emphasis on the benefits of learning outside of four walls.

“Forget your troubles and dance” were the wonderful lyrics once sang by Bob Marley and he wasn’t far wrong as we stepped into an old dance school that sits quietly at the bottom of a paved courtyard in Saint Germain. (7th arr) Not to be fooled though as the seemingly quiet exterior says nothing about the movements and music that is being played inside as a couple practises for their first dance.

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 and moustache above?), and “he was a huge deal in his day, even though he’s not very well known [now],” explained Robert Beachy in a 2017 Undiscovered podcast, which explains why he was so high-up on Hitler’s hit-list. Today, we’re retracing the highs and lows of his career, from a, eherm, “self-pleasure bicycle” to his revolutionary strides in gender reassignment surgery…

You could stand in the endless line at Ladurée, queuing up with the other macaron zombies, or you could go on a little hunt, off the beaten path for somewhere slightly more worth your precious time in Paris ...

Once a month, our Left Bank boutique transforms into the "Paris Writers & Readers Club", a creative candlelit haven after hours for writers and readers to share ideas, readings, and the simple joy of human connection over a glass of wine. For each salon, Nessy invites a special guest author to lead the salon with a reading and answer questions about their work, their process and experience as a writer.