From seductive, big screen sirens, to sleek, speeding locomotives; from opulent French Art Deco to the straightforward functional
German Bauhaus;from elegant ocean liners to smoke-filled juke-joints; from beaded and bobbed flappers to machine-gun-toting Chicago gangsters - these are but some of the unforgettable images that marked the ’20s and ’30s, that contributed to their multifaceted style and that make them so endlessly fascinating to many of us today.
Arguably the most significant decades of this century - encompassing war and peace, prosperity and Depression, Prohibition and excess, age-old traditions and newfangled inventions - the ’20s and ’30s gave birth to a gamut of now classic fashions in art, architecture and design; a panoply of advances in the nascent media, as well as in science and technology; an unbelievable range of vehicles traveling over the land, on the sea and through the air; and a whole mail-order catalog full of household gadgets and appliances to seduce the hungry consumer.
’20s & ’30s Style covers a score of topics which made these two decades famous - and infamous: political upheavals and social advances; the silver screen and the wondrous radio; the rising power of advertising in the ever-growing print and other media; the stark Modern Movement in architecture and the stylish Moderne in design; ever-shorter hair and ever-shortening hemlines, and dozens more customs and concoctions, facts and fads, tragedies and triumphs.This chronicle of recent times-gone-by, related with lively text and lavish full color illustrations, is sure to be a fascinating, evocative, and informative volume.