1920’s and Art Deco Style

The style of Art Deco and the roar­ing 20’s arguably never really goes away as a style that influ­ences fash­ion and design. There is how­ever a cur­rent revival thanks in no small part to the remake of the Great Gatsby. The book is set in the boom and pro­hi­bi­tion years of 1920s Amer­ica. The remake stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby, Tobey Maguire as Nick Car­raway, Carey Mul­li­gan as Daisy Buchanan, Joel Edger­ton as Tom Buchanan and Isla Fisher as Myr­tle Wilson.

The 20s, at least before the great crash, were a time of opu­lence and boom fol­low­ing the end of the First World War in 1918. Opti­mism at least in the vic­to­ri­ous coun­tries was high. Inno­va­tion and indus­try were mov­ing at a fran­tic pace and many peo­ple were look­ing for­ward to a brave new tomor­row. Cars and aero­planes which were rel­a­tively new inven­tions were start­ing to come into their own and look like the vehi­cles we know today rRather than rick­ety ear­lier mod­els of cars and planes.

Dou­glas DC-3, SE-CFP, oper­ated by non-profit organ­i­sa­tion “Fly­gande Vet­er­aner” in Swe­den photo by Towpilot

Chrysler Air­flow from the col­lec­tion at the Wal­ter P. Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills, MI. Photo by Randy Stern http://flickr.com/photos/65962456@N00

The 1920s was a time of wealth and increas­ingly easy global travel and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. You can see in the fol­low­ing image from the Iowa press build­ing the thoughts of the age.

Art Deco mural, old Press-Citizen Build­ing, Iowa City. Photo by Bill Whittaker

Travel and Exploration

Global travel meant increased explo­ration and big dis­cov­er­ies put the civ­i­liza­tions of the past very much into the pop­u­lar cul­ture of the 1920s. Tutankhamun’s tomb was dis­cov­ered in the early 20s and there was a fas­ci­na­tion with antiq­uity and in par­tic­u­lar Egypt and South Amer­ica. The East­ern Colum­bia Build­ing in Los Ange­les I think per­fectly demon­strates the mix of future and past, even if in this case it could do with a bit of a power hose!

East­ern Colum­bia Build­ing front entrance look­ing up at tile­work above the doors. Photo by wikipedia con­trib­u­tor Binkster­net http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Binksternet

The East­ern Stan­dard Build­ing as shot by Molly Louise Shep­ard Berke, Copy­right © 2008

Is this rel­e­vant? If you’ve ever watched Ghost Busters or been to New York you’ll prob­a­bly be famil­iar with sky­scrap­ers that remain impres­sive look­ing to this day such as the Chrysler Build­ing and Empire State Build­ing both still very iconic build­ings and land­marks in New York. In the UK, tele­vi­sion series like Agatha Christie’s Poirot means this style is rarely off the small screen while archi­tects are always return­ing to period for inspi­ra­tion or to cre­ate a nos­tal­gic feel.

The entrance lobby of the Empire State Build­ing. Photo by Ken Thomas http://www.kenthomas.us/

Cen­tury The­atre (built 1998) in Ven­tura, CA Pho­tog­ra­phy by Carol Highsmith

Style and Fash­ion — Flappers!

We’ve cov­ered a lot of back­ground but aside from maybe help­ing to find an Art Deco car for the wed­ding or venue we’ve not cov­ered too much wed­ding or style.  The fash­ion of the time can be sum­marised by the flap­pers.  Such a term could be taken as good or bad at the time depen­dent on your point of view.  Flap­pers were women who were in many ways for­ward think­ing and fit­ted in with the idea of equal­ity between men and women.

They were women who drove cars or rode motor bikes, cut their hair short into bobs, wore skirts that were not full length and had lib­eral atti­tudes.  Flap­pers’ skirts were also quite dis­tinc­tive and maybe a bit too much reflected the archi­tec­ture of the time — they were quite straight line and not really fit­ted.  That said, some rein­ter­pre­ta­tions by mod­ern design­ers can be spec­tac­u­lar look­ing, tak­ing the best ele­ments of the period and blend­ing them with some more flat­ter­ing dresses.

Actress Alice Joyce in 1926, image from the George Grantham Bain Col­lec­tion (United States, Library of Congress)

Actress Louise Brooks in 1927, image from the George Grantham Bain Col­lec­tion (United States, Library of Congress)

More Ideas

You can visit my pin­ter­est board on Art Deco Wed­ding Inspi­ra­tion to see many images and ideas for all man­ner of items from jew­ellery to dresses.  For flow­ers, pea­cock feath­ers work per­fectly and you can see sev­eral exam­ples of these on there.  If you’re look­ing for a very opu­lent look Art Deco does a gold look very well.  It’s also really bold and styl­ish and in many ways fits into mod­ern graphic design trends.

Art Deco chan­de­lier in Music Hall at Munic­i­pal Audi­to­rium, Kansas City, Mis­souri by Wikipedia Author Charvex

Por­tion of Wis­dom, with Light and Sound, located above the entrance of 30 Rock­e­feller Cen­ter (GE Build­ing), New York City. Pho­to­graph by Jaime Ardiles-Arce Art­work http://www.ardiles-arce.com/

I hope this has whet­ted your appetite for Art Deco and the roar­ing 20s. There will be a follow-on post look­ing at how to make your sta­tionery Art Deco and some of the bespoke wed­ding sta­tionery col­lec­tions from Artemis Sta­tionery that can reflect this style. There will also be advice for if you’re doing your own sta­tionery. My wed­ding sta­tionery blog also has more advice on wed­ding craft­ing and var­i­ous styles.

Bologne art deco style place name from Artemis Stationery