Art Deco: The 1925 Paris Fair That Named a Style Decades Later

In 1925 Paris hosted the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, an international exhibition of modern decorative and industrial arts. It brought together thousands of designers from across Europe and beyond.²

The style first shown there spread fast. It began in western Europe in the 1910s and 1920s and became a major style in the United States in the 1930s.¹ Britannica sums it up in four words: “modernism turned into fashion.”¹

At the time, the French spoke of the Style Moderne. British and American critics said “Moderne,” “Jazz Moderne” or “Zigzag Moderne.”² The term “Art Deco,” short for arts décoratifs, was only coined in the 1960s, when the style came back into fashion.^{1, 2}

Art Deco borrowed from everywhere. Britannica lists Art Nouveau, the Bauhaus, Cubism and the costumes and sets of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes among its influences, along with ideas drawn from ancient Egypt, Native American art, classical antiquity and nature.¹ The V&A adds the arts of Africa and East Asia.²

Its stars were designers as much as artists: the furniture maker Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann, the glass and jewelry designer René Lalique, the fashion designer Paul Poiret.¹

In America, Art Deco went vertical. The Chrysler Building, designed by William Van Alen and completed in 1930, with its sunburst spire of stainless steel, is often called the perfect Art Deco skyscraper.¹

Rockefeller Center and the Empire State Building followed, and in the 1930s the style took over South Beach in Miami, now a historic district.¹ It went out of fashion during the Second World War, and came back from the late 1960s.¹