I’ve been a fan of Art Deco since I was a pre-teen. The clean lines appealed to me when I discovered pieces at auctions with my mom, and she schooled me on that historical time period. I guess some of us never grow up, or at least never outgrow what appeals to us as youngsters.
I graduated from college smack-dab in the middle of the 1980s, when greed was considered good, big hair reigned, and Art Deco made a huge comeback—both the original stuff from the 1920s (thanks Barbra Streisand) and the reinterpretation of Deco, through the 80s lens.
I worked at the world-class Italian restaurant Spiaggia, which opened in 1984 , and was itself, a paean to Art Deco, filtered through the excess of the 80s—all crushed silk wall panels and mauve velvet banquets. Remember how much mauve we used to see?
Another Italian influence, that could arguably be called a mash-up of Deco and New Wave, was the Memphis movement. It had nothing to do with the city in Tennessee, but was instead a 1980s post-modern Italian design and architecture collective, founded by Ettore Sottsass.
At that time, I was utterly obsessed with Memphis design, and the pages of Metropolitan Home—my design magazine bible of the time—were full of it. That’s why we were so excited to find the poster below, featuring a Memphis collection opening in Chicago in 1984.
At the same shop where we got this Memphis poster, River Otter, we also picked up this fabulous 80s Lucite and lacquer bar cart, that we are using as a table at the top our stairs. And while this piece is from the 1980s, it has the same rounded and simple Deco lines, and on top is an actual Deco black and Lucite letterbox.
“Everything old is new again,” Jonathan Swift wrote. True Mr. Swift; but while I’m enjoying some of this 80s revival, I’m going to skip the big hair this time around.