Lately, in my personal corner of the internet, I have been showered in imagery of pared-back wood-paneled rooms, and thick cast glass and black lacquer set against ecru rugs and elegant gray silks, jarringly entangled with posts about the most violent cultural and political moment I’ve lived through. The contradiction, however, may not be so random. Hearting Nelson Rockefeller’s 1938 apartment by Jean-Michel Frank (as I never endingly do whenever it pops up), I find it impossible not to see the links between the social conditions, creative impulses, and cultural zeitgeist of our time and those that formed Art Deco 100 years ago.
I was taught that Art Deco is the name for a movement that merely links the Beaux Arts and Art Nouveau of the 19th century to the International Style of the 20th century—a slightly “confused” transitional aesthetic between the two World Wars. With its figural decorative details and celebration of lavish materials, it stood in sharp contrast to the radical agenda that was the backbone of the Bauhaus, which actively deconstructed the traditional relationships between design and class, value, community, and means of production. In 1925 the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris popularized the term Art Deco and became the launchpad for the soon-to-be-pervasive style. It would seem no coincidence that 1925 also saw the forced relocation of the original Bauhaus under pressure from an increasingly right-wing Weimar government. Based on a vague understanding of this dichotomy, from Collins Avenue to the corner of 42nd Street and Lex, the Art Deco movement seemed to me aesthetically superficial and politically neutral, the last phase (or gasp) of all things pre-Modern in the history of design—albeit a joy to look at.
The Cloud Club at the Chrysler Building.
In fact, “Art Deco” is shorthand for a collection of global styles that coexisted and, at times, contradicted one another from the 1910s to the 1940s. Collectively they represent a shift away from the avant-garde, expressionistic, innovative, and organic styles of the Belle Epoque toward a synthesis of order, enduring values, nostalgia, and classicism. In the United States the Art Deco taste embodied an interwar enthusiasm for democratic values and international imperial dominance, with frequent allusions to ancient Rome. In France the movement patriotically conjured the golden age of decorative arts at the court of Versailles and the birth of an enduring definition of luxury there. Wherever the elegant lines of Art Deco left their mark, we are not looking at a mere transitional style but at a legitimate stop along the way in the cycle of taste.
So what to make of the current fervor for Art Deco at its centenary? I propose that, whereas we, in the pre-Covid design community, found inspiration in dreams of a radical future, we now find ourselves increasingly and overtly drawn to the past. And I believe it is possible that the social and political conservatism of this moment might directly relate to this yearning for classical beauty, as seen in the much-applauded recent collections from Pieter Mulier at Alaïa and the drop-dead-gorgeous rooms of Courtney Applebaum and Trevor Cheney. It takes only the briefest look at the quilted satin bedroom of Helena Rubinstein, the severe austerity of Eugenia Errázuriz’s salon, or the dazzling juxtapositions of Marie-Laure de Noailles’s hotel particulier—iconic and perennially inspiring Art Deco spaces—to appreciate that just because a design is respectful of history and not defiant, it can nonetheless achieve a richness of invention. At a time when social progress no longer seems inevitable and technological evolutions do not always feel like improvements, there is something in the way Art Deco communicates fluid power, luxury, and refinement that makes it an irresistible reference.
Yves Saint Laurent’s Grand Salon at 55 Rue de Babylone in Paris.
After several years of tumult in the art world, perhaps people are looking for a more traditional lens through which value can be assessed: materiality and craftsmanship. The late 2010s and early 2020s saw a taste and a market that prioritized ideas, experimental materials, and design gestures that gave form to cultural identity. But if the pendulum is to swing the other way, then we may be looking at an aesthetic trend that goes beyond a superficial appreciation of Art Deco and taps into the value system from which it emerged.
And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If the movement’s celebration of the human hand and the echoes of classicism were developments in reaction to the explosively industrialized hyperconsumerist styles leading up to WWI, then could not an analogous taste suit the AI-terrified, Shein-reproachful, art fair–fatigued consumer of today? Art Deco shaped the romance of the past with the lines of Modernism, and maybe right now we are yearning for that paradox.
Art Deco
This story appears in the October 2025 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW
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