Ève Salvail is a Québécois model who became instantly recognizable in the 1990s after shaving her head and tattooing a Chinese dragon across her scalp. The decision was made while modelling in Japan and helped attract Jean Paul Gaultier, followed by appearances for Chanel and Versace.
In 1998, Helmut Lang became the first fashion designer to advertise on top of New York taxis. Instead of elaborate campaign images, the small roof signs often carried little more than his name. They circulated until 2004, turning ordinary yellow cabs into a moving extension of Lang’s severe minimalism.
From 1992 to 2009, a six-storey DKNY mural overlooked Broadway and Houston Street in SoHo. Designed by Peter Arnell and painted directly onto brick, it placed the company’s initials over the Manhattan skyline and Statue of Liberty. It appeared in the opening credits of NYPD Blue and gradually became an unofficial city landmark. When Hollister acquired the wall’s advertising rights and painted over it, New Yorkers mourned the loss of an advertisement.
Jenny Shimizu is a Japanese-American model and actor who became one of the defining androgynous faces of 1990s fashion. She was working as a mechanic in Los Angeles when she arrived at a Calvin Klein casting on her motorcycle and was noticed in the parking lot. Her crew cut, tattoos and men’s clothes were retained rather than styled away. Within weeks, she was appearing in Italian Vogue, walking for designers including Jean Paul Gaultier and becoming the first Asian model to walk for Prada. A Banana Republic billboard later placed her above the words “American Beauty”—a description she had never felt applied to her.
La Grande-Motte is a seaside resort near Montpellier, built almost entirely from scratch by the French government during the 1960s and 1970s. The project was intended to transform a marshy, mosquito-heavy coast into a domestic rival to Spain’s increasingly popular beaches. Architect Jean Balladur responded with an entire town of white concrete pyramids, curved apartment blocks and geometric sun screens, drawing inspiration from Mesoamerican temples and his idea of the 21st century
The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace is an immense Catholic church built by Côte d’Ivoire’s first president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, in his hometown and newly appointed capital, Yamoussoukro. Completed in 1989, it closely resembles St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, only larger by some measurements: its dome rises 158 metres and its interior holds 18,000 people. Each of its 7,000 seats has an individual air vent, while one stained-glass window includes Houphouët-Boigny kneeling beside Jesus.
Gbadolite is a city in northern Democratic Republic of the Congo and the ancestral home of Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled the country—then called Zaire—from 1965 to 1997. Mobutu transformed the remote settlement into his personal capital, complete with three palaces, a five-star hotel, hospital, Coca-Cola plant and a 3,200-metre runway built to receive chartered Concordes from Europe. Foreign leaders were entertained among marble, fountains and Chinese pagodas in what became known as the “Versailles of the Jungle.” When Mobutu fell in 1997, the palaces were looted and abandoned. Vegetation entered the ballrooms and the airport nearly emptied.
Muammar Gaddafi was Libya’s ruler from 1969 to 2011 and an unusually committed practitioner of political theatre. On foreign visits, he often received dignitaries inside a large Bedouin tent, presenting it as a connection to his desert upbringing. The tent travelled to Brussels, Moscow, Rome and Paris, where it was erected in palace gardens and surrounded by security, communications equipment and Gaddafi’s considerable entourage. Its greatest difficulty came in New York in 2009. Central Park refused it, New Jersey objected and officials ordered it removed from an estate owned by Donald Trump for violating local regulations.
Saya Hnin-Mahla was a Burmese snake charmer and ritual priestess known for performing with king cobras. In footage shot around 1939 by wildlife documentarian Armand Denis, she faces a large cobra with her hands held behind her back. She moves with the raised animal, avoids its lunges, then bends forward and kisses it on the head three times. Afterwards, she simply turns and walks away.
Since 2013, several intersections in Kinshasa have been governed by eight-foot aluminium robots. Designed by Congolese engineer Thérèse Izay Kirongozi and built by the women-led cooperative Wotech, they rotate at the waist, raise their arms and flash red or green lights from their palms. Solar panels rise from their heads like enormous hats, while cameras in their eyes record motorists. They were introduced partly because traffic lights were unreliable and human officers could be ignored—or bribed. The robots cannot pursue anyone, but drivers reportedly obey them.