Twee Magazine

Nessy. Photo from MessyNessyChic.

Vanessa Grall, who calls herself Messy Nessy and is responsible for the website MessyNessyChic, has an aesthetic that is at once ill-defined and immediately recognizable. Her site acts as a sort of warehouse for anything that interests or delights her, and that covers a broad range of things, but they all tend to be hidden, secret, forgotten, precious, somehow glamorous, and decidedly twee.

Nessy's story, from what I have read, is of a somewhat discombobulated young woman from Notting Hill who relocated to Paris, spent a year knocking around and skint, and then started a website about things that made her curious and excited, which now supports her. She passionately loves Paris, and has an explorer's sense of the city's hidden nooks and crannies -- she has an entire section of her blog called My Secret Paris.

It is a bit surprising to me that she had to leave one of the most fascinating cities in the world and relocate to another of the world's most fascinating cities, but, then, it is very hard to be a tourist in your hometown. From Paris, she seems to be rediscovering London: Her site has featured stories on a London store where all the mechanize was actually fluffy felt reproductions, the interior of the Battersea Power Station and other hidden London treasures, and secret members clubs from the Swinging London of the 60s.

Nessy's blog is exciting in part because it provides readers with a sense of the world as an adventure, and that adventures can be discovered in your home town, in the pages of history books, in online photo archives, down hidden alleys and under paving stones. Further, Nessy encourages her readers to be explorers, and shows how others have adventured, and made something new as a result of their adventures. She has documented people who photograph ghost signs, turned abandoned Detroit homes into makeshift gardens, and filled their town with tiny, secret doors.

It's hard not to be infected by her worldview. Since I started reading her blog, I have been keeping a list of secrets I have discovered in the town I live in, including a hidden bootlegger hole between floors in one of the city's most exclusive hotels, a stereo formerly owned by Karen Carpenter in a local bar, a fallout shelter for cows, and Roy Roger's stuffed horse and dog, kept in a secret storage space in town. If I can find these things in Omaha, there are discoveries waiting everywhere.