Osbert Lancaster, in Pillar to Post and Homes, Sweet Homes, nailed some pretentious styles of the interwar years with epithets like Banker’s Georgian, Stockbroker’s Tudor and Bypass Variegated. Here are a few more that reveal a place, a time, an attitude, a level of aspiration.
advertisers’ nostalgia How could anyone who had read the book and who had any respect for literature… turn this story of glum penny-pinched '30s London into 1990s-style standard advertiser's jolly-jumpered "Heritage" golden nostalgia? (imdb on Keep the Aspidistra Flying)
airline stewardess chic
album-cover art (Damien Hirst)
boho chic
Bungalow Bliss (era in Ireland)
cocktail grunge
consumptive poet rock
cup and saucer comedy
diorama décor
Edwardabethan (Richard Thompson)
festival chic
folktronica
French flea market (old posters and ads for drinks)
Gin and Jag Belt Does it still exist? Yes, apparently it’s in Maidenhead, according to a government report of January 2003.
haunt rock
heroin chic
high tech
Joke Oak
Marks and Spencer Zen: beige, white, brown and piles of large pebbles. (Briefly Woolworths zen, before the chain went bust.)
maximalism (minimalism with 70s wallpaper)
Neo Geo
noncom
pagan chic
restaurant music (Polina Shepherd) bowdlerised heritage - with sparklers!
silver-fork novels novels of the 1820s/30s that were disguised manuals for the socially aspirant
Tarot reader chic
the aesthetic is very
Ikea room set (Jay Rayner Observer Nov 09)
the
Celine Dion school of design (Colin and Justin)
the
first-class airport lounge look felt a bit Mayfair 2004. (Matthew Norman)
These developments risk turning “
contemporary” into the
new Neo-Georgian.
The Treasury went from
Soviet-era hospital to
Marriott hotel.
White-telephone movies 60s Italian movies that used a white telephone to signal "socially aspirant bourgeoisie"
