Art Deco is my favourite period style in interior design and architecture. I love everything to do with the Roaring Twenties, society was changing dramatically with the emancipation of women through the flapper movement and many world pioneering brands were born such as fashion brands Chanel and Gucci. I love the styles of Coco Chanel and designers that were her contemporaries such as Italian Elsa Schiaparelli renown for signature “shocking pink” and her knitwear. Her designs were influenced by the Dadaists. Art Deco as a movement was originally born out of an exhibition in Paris in 1925 “Exposition Internationale Des Arts Decoratif” and the name Art Deco is simply a shortened version of this. I learnt French at an early age going on my first french exchange at the age of nine to Versailles. After this I was so impressed with the extravagance of the Palais de Versailles I believe that was one of the first times I thought about becoming an interior designer. I took many more trips to France over my school and college years taking French at GCSE and A-level and even a module of my interior design degree was in French. On one of my trips I came across some postcards on a streetside market as well as some original twenties newspapers called “Le Petit Echo De La Mode” which were fashion newspapers (I originally wanted to be a fashion designer from an early age too!) I had to buy them and still have them (there are many many images on Google of these). The postcards I still have too and they are original postcards from the Paris Exhibition of 1925 which I am posting here today. If you like these please also see the previous blogpost on my original New York World Fair postcards found on my honeymoon to New York!
Anyway what prompted me to write this is I’m now tentatively waiting for some postcards I’ve just bid on on Ebay of the Crystal Palace which was known as the “Great Exhibition of 1851”, as I felt having a London exhibition set to go with the New York and Paris ones was a must even if they are a little earlier in history! I can see them under some clocks if I ever get a design studio up and running. If I get them I will post them on here. Do you collect anything from the past if so what I’d love to hear how it started?
