Elena Tamburini’s Touch-Encouraging Furniture

Inspired by sex as taboo, especially among older people, Italian designer Elena Tamburini created Filotea—a collection of furniture that encourages physical affection whether solo or with another individual. The range includes several standout pieces: Otello is a mirror surrounded by feathers, which allows the user to caress their own face, and the Filomena is a body brush that stimulates the skin. Our favorite is the …

Documenting Strip Clubs Throughout the American South

French photographer François Prost’s Gentlemen’s Club collection archives the sun-soaked facades of strip clubs across the southern US—everywhere from the beaches of Florida to downtown Houston. Through 193 photos, Prost surveys the design of these buildings, with their “generic signifiers of sex and sensual pleasure,” focusing on parts of the country that have “conservative and puritan reputations.” The exteriors are brightly colored, eerily similar from city …

Revisiting the New Yorker’s Coverage of the Apollo 11 Landing

In the Talk of the Town section of The New Yorker’s 26 July 1969 issue, reporters visited eight moon-landing parties—and documented the excitement that unfolded. From 50th Street and Sixth Avenue to the headquarters of NBC at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, audiences tuned in to the incredible quest and watched anxiously as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin ventured into the unknown. Spliced with footage from the …