70s Style & Design
CHAPTER 2: BELLE EPOQUE
chapters:
Revivalism was a cornerstone of 70s style. The early half of the decade saw a massive trend for Naughty Nineties, Art Nouveau, 1920s and 30s and Art Deco retro. An intoxicating nostalgia for fin-de-siecle and interwar decadence had been bubbling up since the mid-60s thanks in large part to a Victoria & Albert Museum exhibition on Aubrey Beardsley and Bevis Hillier's influential tome Art Deco. In the 70s, designer Barbara Hulanicki in particular propelled it into the mainstream via the Hollywood-on-acid flamboyance of her London-based Big Biba emporium housed in a former Deco department store. Biba’s camp, louche, androgynous aesthetic appealed to 70s minorities and eccentrics, from feminists and gays to black pop acts and glam rock stars. The craze was reflected in ritzy, mirrored interiors, sequined flapper fashions, Jazz Age-inspired pop music and every vein of the arts (from TV’s Upstairs Downstairs to the movie Cabaret) only to fizzle out finally in the mid-70s, ousted in part by punk whose aesthetic was grounded uncompromisingly in the present.
Also includes: Butler & Wilson, Celia Birtwell, John Bishop, Manolo Blahnik, Marc Bolan, Ossie Clark, Justin de Villeneuve, Erté, Noosha Fox, Elton John, Lindsay Kemp, Vernon Lambert, Antony Little, Miami Design Preservation League, Tom Osher, Anna Piaggi, Charles Pierce, Thea Porter, Janet and Tim Street-Porter, Patricia Roberts, The Pointer Sisters, Régines nightclub, Twiggy