The Luxe Experience Glamour's Golden Age


The Luxe Experience

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-Sex.

-Speed.

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-Escapism.

-Glamour.

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Our 21st century obsessions are not as new as we think.

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The decades between the two world wars saw a cultural revolution

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so exciting, so extraordinary that it still shapes who we are today.

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The British learned what modernity was,

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they learned a new aspect of their own identity.

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From technology and design,

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to fashion and sexuality,

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everything was changing at a dazzling pace.

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Speed was central to the age.

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The mass production line was increasing the pace of life...

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the speed of communications had increased,

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everything seemed to be going faster.

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Hollywood came calling...

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..selling a shimmering fantasy of glamour that refuses to fade.

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We're fascinated by the '20s and '30s

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cos it resonates with our own age.

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Celebrity glamour, celebrity culture,

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the cult of the personality.

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These were decades of turmoil, unemployment,

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political conflict and the prospect of war.

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But they were also decades of optimism and aspiration.

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What happened was a kind of design democracy.

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For the first time, ordinary people started to get a little hint in

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their lives of this new, glamorous, shiny, modern world.

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This new world not only felt different, it looked different too.

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We dared to dream and for a brief, brilliant moment,

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our dreams became reality.

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'The Queen Mary nearing New York, and those of you

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'who have ever enjoyed American hospitality

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'can imagine the welcome in store for her.'

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In August 1938, the luxury British liner, Queen Mary,

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arrived in New York, having made the fastest trans-Atlantic sea crossing

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in history.

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It was a sensational achievement and a defining moment.

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'By how much did you smash the record, Captain?

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'By one hour and 14 minutes.'

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Modern, fast, dynamic

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and with an interior adorned with Art Deco glitz,

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she was the definition of elegance

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and a focus for British national pride.

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'When records are broken, the Queen Mary will break them.'

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The Queen Mary wasn't just an icon of British design achievement,

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she carried with her the accumulated dreams and desires

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of the previous two decades.

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She provided a total experience,

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a combination of speed and luxury, the very qualities which defined

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the Luxe Experience of Glamour's Golden Age.

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It's an irony that, out of the horror of the trenches,

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a glittering new age was born.

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The survivors would rebuild a shattered landscape.

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They would transform a broken world.

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The pioneers of this new design frontier

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would be artists and architects.

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But for the British, there was a moment of hesitation and doubt.

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After the Great War, you've got a sense of release,

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I think, a sense of release and a sense of relief.

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There's a notion that we're going to build a land fit for heroes,

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but we're looking back to the past, back to old certainties.

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So, in design terms, we've got the Arts and Crafts movement,

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which still dominates 1920s' England, and the Arts and Crafts Movement,

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with its praiseworthy but pathological earnestness,

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wished that the Industrial Revolution would go away.

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It didn't want the future.

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But like it or not, the future was on its way.

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No nostalgia. No regrets. Art Deco.

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Art Deco was very much of the moment.

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The streamlined interior.

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Sharp, angular, brightly coloured.

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Primitive African Art.

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The Egyptian, Assyrian...

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Sunrise motifs...

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..abstract, jagged shapes.

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..aluminium and chrome...

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Bold geometric zigzag patterns.

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Mechanical forms, cogs, horizontal lines.

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The sensation of speed.

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Super cool, super modern, super glamorous.

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This is where Art Deco was born.

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The capital of fantasy...

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of fun.

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A place where the past was there to be forgotten.

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Paris.

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There's a greater embrace of what it is to be modern

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in a more conspicuous sense in France than there is in Britain.

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Paris had become the home of haute couture

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and there was a very strong sense of women consuming

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and consuming modernity, becoming modern,

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both in their dress but also in their homes.

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Paris sold style.

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Its trend-setting chic and upmarket products led the world.

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Keen to promote new Parisian design,

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the French government staged an international showcase in 1925.

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It was a canny piece of marketing.

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You've got official government encouragement to develop Paris

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as this great global capital of luxury and glamour and style.

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They invited countries from around the globe to come and exhibit,

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but making sure that France had the prime spots, the most pavilions,

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so they could outclass everybody else in terms of style and glamour.

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The International Exposition of Modern Industrial

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and Decorative Arts was an instant sensation.

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Located in the very heart of The City of Light,

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the exhibition attracted over 15 million people

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who came to gaze at the exclusive products on display.

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There were Makassar ebonies, shark skin and ivory shagreen,

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there was white gold, wonderful Japanese lacquer work.

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The important thing about Deco in its early stages

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is that it's a very rich, very opulent, very elitist design style.

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It's only for the rich.

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The new French style was not called Art Deco at the time.

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With its wholehearted embrace of the future,

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it was known simply as the Moderne.

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The 1925 exhibition was quite explicit. It was to portray

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France as a modern nation,

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and no exhibits were allowed to be shown unless they were modern.

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It was very rich, very complex, no nostalgia whatsoever,

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but looking outside of Europe for visual sources.

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Suddenly the world was opening up in quite spectacular ways.

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'A women's world. That's what it was now.

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'Shooting big game with rifles or a movie camera.'

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One of the key elements in Art Deco, defining it, is the exotic.

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There are Egyptian elements, North African elements, there are...

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Japanese elements, Chinese elements, South American elements.

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All these things are reflections of our love of the exotic,

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which was about the realisation that it is all out there,

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we could actually see it.

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Art Deco was about the glamour of travel

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and the novelty of new technology.

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It was about escaping the hardships of the past

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and the anxieties of the present. Above all, Art Deco was about fun.

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The thing about Deco is that it sucks up anything.

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To try and define Deco,

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to try and look for a serious intellectual purpose behind Deco

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is like trying to nail a manifesto to a bubble. It just goes pop.

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The British had been in Paris in 1925,

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but hadn't exactly been the life and soul of the party.

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Their stand had promoted stolid brands

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such as Wedgwood and Doulton.

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The racy new French products

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left them feeling distinctly uncomfortable.

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The British take on Art Deco is what you would have expected -

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a load of decadent French stuff, souffle stuff.

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It's rather like that idea that the British in the 18th century

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would have a go at French cooking and say that the French used

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these fancy sauces to disguise bad meat.

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The British found what the French were doing

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was like a sauce on roast beef.

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Of course, the British had their own peculiar fondness for sauce.

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It was in the permissive atmosphere of London's West End theatres

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that sexy, salacious French Deco

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first arrived to spice up our humdrum lives.

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Art Deco is the quintessential good night out.

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The Arts and Crafts Movement wants a moral context for its design.

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It's been taught that good design is tied in with good behaviour

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and along comes Deco which says, "No, it's not. Let's have some fun."

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Art Deco is a supremely theatrical style.

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You walk into the lobby of the Savoy Theatre

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and suddenly you're living the dream.

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It just takes your breath away.

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It gives the lie to the statement

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that so many design historians insist on making that

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there is no such thing as British Deco.

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You just need to look around you and you see it and you love it.

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From the beginning, Art Deco had reflected

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traditionally female tastes and fashions.

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'The woman today demands practical things that are attractive as well.

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'These facts influence the modern designer and produce furniture

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'that is distinctive to our age.'

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In Britain, it was women designers who led the field.

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I think probably the most interesting English decorator,

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as they were called then, was Syrie Maugham.

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She was married to the famous writer Somerset Maugham,

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but they divorced and for that reason, in fact,

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she had to earn her own living and she moved into interior decoration.

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Very typically, she started by designing her own interior,

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a lovely room that was very much written about in Chelsea

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in her own house and called The White Room.

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In fact, it was various shades of cream,

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but it was striking in its use of this sort of monotone.

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Syrie Maugham's soft, chic and subtle take on Art Deco

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was a huge hit with her upper class clients.

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But it was another woman designer

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who would take Art Deco to the masses.

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Deco at its most colourful, vibrant and exuberant.

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In terms of British Art Deco, Clarice Cliff is it.

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She was the revolutionary. It's quite a romantic story.

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She ran off for a romantic weekend to Paris

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with the sales director of the factory where she worked.

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She sees things at the Paris Exhibition,

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which clearly impress her enormously and she comes back,

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and she was given a pile of waste china to play with

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and she began to do patterns like this which are vibrant, dynamic

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and what they show is the impact of that French trip.

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Popular modernism, cheap, accessible, colourful,

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decorative, exciting shapes -

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nobody else in Britain was doing it at that point.

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By the late '20s, this stuff was selling in tons.

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British designers like Clarice Cliff introduced French Art Deco

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to a mass market in the late 1920s. But it would take the Americans

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to truly democratise the high society style.

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-It certainly is beautiful, isn't it?

-Yes.

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Hollywood is Art Deco, Art Deco is Hollywood.

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It's the place where people would have seen Art Deco.

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They wouldn't have seen it in the homes of the rich and the elite,

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they would have seen it on the Hollywood screen.

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I think Art Deco was very attractive to Hollywood

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because it represents novelty and people went to the cinema

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for something that would surprise them, interest them, entertain them.

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In the 1920s, the global media machine of

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Hollywood was just gearing up.

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Crucial to the way it projected itself was the gleaming,

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up-to-the-minute style of Art Deco.

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Art Deco was absolutely vital to the success of Hollywood.

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A huge party of Americans came to visit the Paris exhibition.

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For example, Cedric Gibbons, who's the art director at MGM,

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he uses Art Deco to symbolise a sort of glamorous,

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young, cutting-edge, slightly naughty and sexy character.

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In Our Dancing Daughters, you see this constantly moving flapper.

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You see her in the mirrors changing at the start of the movie

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where her feet are constantly moving.

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She's very vibrant, very energetic.

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Even to change her clothes, she can't stop dancing.

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It's all mirrored surfaces, the floors are black and reflective...

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very geometric designs -

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the shawl that she puts on is a black and white geometric design.

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She's living the Art Deco lifestyle.

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In Our Dancing Daughters, art director Cedric Gibbons

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deliberately contrasts the raffish Art Deco interiors

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of its liberated flapper heroine

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with the repressive Victorian atmosphere of her friend's home.

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This gleeful stylistic assault on an uptight old world

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would be played out in Hollywood film after Hollywood film.

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Art Deco is very naughty and very transgressive,

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and that's probably why I like it.

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It's a challenge to British established taste, I think,

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as was the whole of Hollywood.

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If we look at the film Top Hat, right at the beginning,

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we get Fred Astaire entering a sort traditional English gentlemen's club

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and starting to tap dance.

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So we get that kind of transgression of the English upper classes

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happening at that moment.

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Hollywood Art Deco was revved up.

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It was rapid fire.

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It roared with the energy of its time.

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This is the machine age.

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The machine is central to the aesthetics of the period.

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Busby Berkeley movies are very good examples of

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where the machine becomes a kind of art.

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In Gold Diggers Of 1933 for example, the routine Petting in the Park,

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you see all the women running

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when it starts to rain into a set of booths where they then change.

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And when they come out they are dressed in robot-like costumes.

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And this is like the women themselves have become machines.

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Deco didn't just dominate the movies.

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It also defined the new cinemas that showed them.

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Art Deco was absolutely vital for the design of cinemas in Britain.

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Cinema going had been a fairly dodgy thing to do.

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You went to sort of flea pits.

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It wasn't something that respectable people did,

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so that cinema owners were absolutely hell-bent on

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creating gorgeous buildings

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where you could have tea with your friends and then watch a film.

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This is the New Victoria Cinema built in 1929.

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Really for the first time lighting was considered as

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part of the architecture externally and also the interior design,

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so we get muted lighting, different coloured lighting and so on.

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It's inspired by the idea that we had from America of

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the atmospheric cinema where you would feel you were

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walking into an Arabian Night's cave

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or you were walking into some underwater grotto.

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The cinema interior is quite wacky,

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but that's great, isn't it? Because that attracts people,

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it gets the masses in to enjoy the films,

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but it also adds to the experience,

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it adds to that element of escapism.

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Deco is about escapism

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in the same way that the Hollywood musical is about escapism.

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You know, the Busby Berkeley musical is Art Deco made flesh, if you like,

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and that notion of escape becomes more

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and more important when your present is so uncongenial and so scary.

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Escape was a craving.

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'The Jarrow Petition - a petition to the government

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'for work for the thousands of unemployed in what is probably

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'the hardest hit town in Britain,

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'is being carried to London by the 200 members of the Jarrow Crusade.'

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The Jarrow March of 1936 has become a symbol of the times.

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Britain was scarred by the Great Depression.

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Poverty was a real and grinding experience for many.

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But there was a paradox at the heart of the age.

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For those in work, the 1930s saw a sustained rise in real wages.

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Beyond the black spots of the industrial north

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there was a gradual rise in prosperity.

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I think the real revolution of the Art Deco period was a social

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revolution, it was about social mobility,

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it was about having what we now call disposable income.

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We could spend on luxuries in a way that we'd never done before.

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Accessibility of consumer materials was suddenly there.

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Art Deco was the ultimate consumer style.

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It screamed luxury, but it whispered affordability.

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Easy to mass produce

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glamorous Deco was both inexpensive and highly desirable.

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I think the story of the kind of democratisation of Art Deco through

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the '20s and '30s is fascinating. There's obviously a kind of time lag.

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The elite style is manifested first,

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but the attraction of that style seen through exhibitions,

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magazines, Hollywood films is very quickly picked up

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by a much wider social group.

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You could go to Woolworths and you could buy an Art Deco pot or vase.

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The industries, the decorative arts industries,

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were very quick to realise the attraction of the style.

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The British have a wonderful talent for taking any serious design

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movement and making it sort of you know very basic and high street.

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You can see that in the suburbs around the great cities.

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The British were able to take something that

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had been refined and delicate and almost ethereal in Paris in 1925,

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and by 1935 they've transformed it into something for everybody.

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Alongside the consumer boom came a housing boom.

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Architecturally the new suburbs were mostly conservative and nostalgic.

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But behind the unassuming exteriors,

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a more daring, democratic world of Deco was flourishing.

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The house was built in 1937 as part of Metroland that sprang up from

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the Metropolitan Line.

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We previously lived in another 1930s house,

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but it had been modernised quite a bit and we decided that

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we wanted to find something that had a lot of original features.

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We love Art Deco because of the interesting shapes, the colours,

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it's just a fascinating period.

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We had all the pieces really in our old house, so it was

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just putting it into the setting and decorating each room individually.

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Clive is very good, a very handy man,

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so he did all the decorating.

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I obviously helped with the interior design and the colour scheme.

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I think a lot of people tend to forget that the 1930s and Art Deco

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was actually quite colourful. People see the black-and-white films

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and don't imagine that there's much colour there, but there is.

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At heart of every British home was the radio.

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The 1930s saw an explosion in the new medium,

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turning the wireless into an indispensable consumer object.

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Radio is a total revolution.

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It's a revolution as big as the internet in its own way,

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and radio has become, in a sense, the symbol of Art Deco because

0:24:430:24:46

they start as a box of scientific tricks

0:24:460:24:49

and they then become a very stylish piece of furniture.

0:24:490:24:52

You can sit there listening to live broadcasts of dance bands,

0:24:520:24:56

you can sit there listening to politicians speak,

0:24:560:24:59

you can sit there listening to the King talking at Christmas.

0:24:590:25:02

All these things come into your home.

0:25:020:25:04

But wonderful wireless delivered less welcome news too.

0:25:070:25:13

'Events of major importance happened in Europe today.

0:25:130:25:16

'This morning German troops made a formal entry

0:25:160:25:20

'into the demilitarised zone on the left bank of the Rhine.'

0:25:200:25:24

Hitler's Germany

0:25:260:25:28

not only had aggressive political and military aims,

0:25:280:25:32

Nazi ideology also set its sights on art and architecture.

0:25:320:25:36

Hitler right from the top does not like anything modern.

0:25:390:25:43

Bam! So anybody working in the arts,

0:25:430:25:46

now let's forget being Jewish for a moment,

0:25:460:25:49

but anyone working in the arts of any sort

0:25:490:25:52

that wanted to be modern was out.

0:25:520:25:54

Germany had been the birthplace of the Modern Movement

0:25:590:26:02

in architecture and design.

0:26:020:26:05

Under Walter Gropius, the radical Bauhaus Art School

0:26:070:26:11

preached a new design philosophy that wanted to rebuild the world.

0:26:110:26:16

Modernism is serious and Art Deco is not.

0:26:160:26:23

Art Deco is a supremely commercial style.

0:26:230:26:28

It will take everything it can

0:26:280:26:30

and it will sell it back to you at the highest price it can.

0:26:300:26:34

The Modern Movement is very definitely ideologically underpinned.

0:26:360:26:40

The Modern Movement is essentially a Socialist movement

0:26:400:26:42

and it has a manifesto, it has a moral imperative to it.

0:26:420:26:48

It's about the triumph of form, it's about stripping away

0:26:480:26:52

useless decoration and ornament, it's about utilitarianism and minimalism.

0:26:520:26:57

To Hitler, Modernism's left-leaning ideals made it suspect.

0:26:580:27:05

The fact that many of its leading lights were Jewish

0:27:050:27:09

made it anathema.

0:27:090:27:12

Life for Jewish architects such as Erich Mendelsohn

0:27:120:27:15

was about to get very hard indeed.

0:27:150:27:18

Mendelsohn was one of the most respected modern architects

0:27:200:27:23

in Germany in the Weimar years just before Hitler came to power.

0:27:230:27:27

He had built some wonderful modern department stores

0:27:270:27:30

called the Schocken Department Store, a great name actually, cos

0:27:300:27:33

they're really about the shock of the new, they're thrilling.

0:27:330:27:37

He'd also been a heroic and very daring engineering

0:27:370:27:40

artillery officer during the First World War, highly decorated.

0:27:400:27:43

So, here's that great conundrum in Germany,

0:27:430:27:45

a great heroic Jewish officer and a great professional talent

0:27:450:27:49

who's about to be told he's wrong on every count.

0:27:490:27:53

He's Jewish and he's a Modern.

0:27:530:27:55

Erich Mendelsohn joined a flood of hugely talented and influential

0:28:010:28:05

emigres coming to find safety in Britain.

0:28:050:28:08

They were the Apostles of a new faith -

0:28:100:28:13

a faith in a Modernist future that would soon find concrete form.

0:28:130:28:20

The most iconic Modernist building in Britain, I guess, is Mendelsohn's

0:28:220:28:26

De La Warr Pavilion.

0:28:260:28:28

Everybody knows it, everybody's seen it in a thousand episodes of Poirot.

0:28:320:28:37

Everybody's seen it in any '30s documentary that has been.

0:28:370:28:42

Yes, it's familiar, but it's so damned beautiful.

0:28:420:28:45

But it caused a tremendous storm.

0:28:490:28:51

When the competition was won by Mendelsohn, the Fascist Week

0:28:510:28:55

said that this was a "contemptible and despicable betrayal of

0:28:550:28:58

"our own countrymen."

0:28:580:29:00

It aroused quite a lot of rather unpleasant emotions.

0:29:000:29:04

The De La Warr Pavilion shines like a Modernist jewel

0:29:040:29:08

on the sunny Sussex coast.

0:29:080:29:10

But it has its roots in a starker, more utilitarian world.

0:29:100:29:15

Mendelsohn began his career designing factories.

0:29:180:29:22

Even then, they were typically Modernist -

0:29:220:29:25

pure, simple.

0:29:250:29:27

Like the De La Warr Pavilion, there was absolutely no surface design.

0:29:270:29:34

In Britain, they were building new factories too,

0:29:340:29:38

but the approach was different,

0:29:380:29:40

dramatically different.

0:29:400:29:42

This was the Hoover Factory. Where Mendelsohn's buildings

0:29:490:29:54

strip away all ornamentation, this positively revels in it.

0:29:540:30:00

It's Tutankhamun for the Machine Age.

0:30:040:30:07

Built on the outskirts of West London in 1932,

0:30:090:30:13

the Hoover Building's jazzy high spirits

0:30:130:30:15

attracted the disapproval of Modernism's young disciples.

0:30:150:30:20

But the building's architect, Thomas Wallis,

0:30:200:30:23

wasn't the type to turn the other cheek.

0:30:230:30:27

Thomas Wallis was very forceful, very dynamic. He didn't necessarily seek

0:30:270:30:32

the limelight, most of the time he chased glamorous ladies,

0:30:320:30:35

this is what he did as a hobby. He was pretty fierce

0:30:350:30:38

and it's very interesting, when he did the Hoover Building

0:30:380:30:41

The Architectural Review magazine had a pop at it

0:30:410:30:43

and they wrote a very cheeky little poem. Thomas Wallis was not amused.

0:30:430:30:47

The Architectural Review decided to have a go at Art Deco

0:30:470:30:49

because it wasn't proper Modernism, and Wallis came round to

0:30:490:30:53

Number Nine Queens Anne Gate, The Architectural Review offices,

0:30:530:30:56

brandishing, it's absolutely true, brandishing a horsewhip,

0:30:560:31:00

hammering on the door saying, "Let me at those whippersnappers!"

0:31:000:31:04

The Hoover Factory has become an icon of Deco in British culture.

0:31:040:31:09

It's an advertisement, it's a brand.

0:31:090:31:11

'Here you see a beating-type of electric sweeper being made.

0:31:180:31:21

'There are 879 parts and 3,631 operations in its manufacture.'

0:31:210:31:28

It's also an advertisement for new technology, which is a fundamental

0:31:280:31:35

part of design theory and Deco design theory in the 1930s.

0:31:350:31:38

A belief not only in the future, a belief in new technology.

0:31:380:31:42

'At last milady can make light of her housework,

0:31:420:31:45

'hardly realising how much care energy and patience

0:31:450:31:48

'have been spent on her behalf.'

0:31:480:31:50

There's an interesting contrast in the period, I think, between

0:31:520:31:55

our acceptance or otherwise of modern art and design,

0:31:550:31:59

and our embrace of technology.

0:31:590:32:01

The British attitude towards progressive or avant-garde art

0:32:010:32:06

has always been ambivalent.

0:32:060:32:07

We're suspicious of it, we think it's a little bit racy, superficial maybe.

0:32:070:32:13

I rather like this. It's very pleasing both in rhythm and colour.

0:32:130:32:18

I'm very glad you like it.

0:32:180:32:20

Of course, you know you've got it upside down?

0:32:200:32:23

But when it comes to technology, we're very happy to embrace that.

0:32:230:32:26

We see that as our positive contribution, if you like,

0:32:260:32:29

to the world, and the engineer is a hero for us.

0:32:290:32:34

The British may have harboured some scepticism about the new styles,

0:32:340:32:39

but they adored speed.

0:32:390:32:40

Fast, functional, fabulous -

0:32:430:32:46

British machines would conquer the world.

0:32:460:32:50

In July 1938, one of Sir Nigel Gresley's A4 Pacifics,

0:32:530:32:58

Mallard, this wedge-shaped, streamlined locomotive,

0:32:580:33:01

garter blue livery with red wheels, came streaking down the hill between

0:33:010:33:06

Grantham and Peterborough and reached the speed,

0:33:060:33:09

momentarily for one second possibly, of 126 miles per hour.

0:33:090:33:12

It was casual, it was amateur, it nearly failed,

0:33:140:33:17

but the most important thing was we had beaten the world

0:33:170:33:21

despite being broken, despite having no money, despite being on our knees,

0:33:210:33:26

we'd beaten the world at a great record

0:33:260:33:28

and, of course, we still hold it.

0:33:280:33:30

The British also dominated automobile technology.

0:33:320:33:37

25 land speed records were set during the interwar years,

0:33:370:33:42

of which 21 were by British drivers in British cars.

0:33:420:33:47

The high Utah desert was the ultimate arena

0:33:510:33:54

for these gladiators of speed.

0:33:540:33:57

In 1935, the world gasped as Sir Malcolm Campbell

0:34:010:34:06

took his futuristic Blue Bird to new limits.

0:34:060:34:10

'Speed - 300 miles an hour, five miles a minute,

0:34:100:34:13

'one mile and 12 seconds, an achievement which balks

0:34:130:34:16

'the imagination and beggars description.'

0:34:160:34:18

'It's great what you've set out to do. Well done, George.'

0:34:180:34:22

Having set the sensational new record, Campbell passed

0:34:220:34:26

the baton onto two other British drivers George Eyston and John Cobb.

0:34:260:34:31

'It's the strangest battle in history,

0:34:310:34:34

'two Englishmen in faraway America fighting side by side

0:34:340:34:37

'to earn the title of fastest man on earth.'

0:34:370:34:39

On the eve of the Second World War, Cobb set a new record of more than

0:34:390:34:44

367 miles per hour in his space-age Railton Special.

0:34:440:34:50

But there was another technology, which would offer the possibility of

0:35:000:35:04

record-breaking speed to a growing band of international adventurers.

0:35:040:35:10

The luxury liner embodied this age,

0:35:100:35:12

it really symbolised it because it had that power, that technology,

0:35:120:35:17

that kind of gigantic proportion about it,

0:35:170:35:20

but it was also within that highly decorated,

0:35:200:35:24

luxurious and fashionable.

0:35:240:35:27

The luxury liner was where engineering and aesthetics finally

0:35:310:35:35

came together for the British.

0:35:350:35:37

Before the First World War, the interiors of transatlantic liners

0:35:370:35:41

had all the heaviness and fussy detail of Victorian hotels.

0:35:410:35:45

But a revolution was about to begin.

0:35:450:35:49

I think what changes in the '20s and '30s is that

0:35:490:35:52

people realise that a ship is not a hotel.

0:35:520:35:55

It requires its own dynamic, its own design principles.

0:35:550:35:58

And from the mid-20s ships begin to look like ships and

0:35:580:36:02

they have a real expression of modernity as defined by

0:36:020:36:06

the Art Deco styles of that period.

0:36:060:36:08

These stylish interiors were the product of a cut-throat competition

0:36:120:36:17

for new passengers.

0:36:170:36:18

Art Deco wasn't a stylistic afterthought,

0:36:180:36:22

it was ammunition in a commercial war.

0:36:220:36:25

There were two ships in particular,

0:36:270:36:29

which were locked in a duel for stylistic supremacy.

0:36:290:36:33

There was a fantastic rivalry between the Cunard's Queen Mary

0:36:340:36:38

and the French Line's Normandie.

0:36:380:36:42

Cunard was always a fairly sort of respectable firm and they really

0:36:420:36:46

hankered for something fairly traditionally British.

0:36:460:36:49

With the Queen Mary they tried to combine a bit of Art Deco glamour

0:36:490:36:53

with something more traditional.

0:36:530:36:56

It was a bit like walking through a fairly modern country house,

0:36:560:36:59

we get over-stuffed armchairs, we get paintings of country scenes,

0:36:590:37:04

and it was all very polite.

0:37:040:37:05

Whereas, with the Normandie,

0:37:050:37:08

I mean, it was like walking through a film set.

0:37:080:37:12

We get the huge dining room with the Lalique glass chandeliers,

0:37:130:37:18

which were fabulous.

0:37:180:37:20

We get the salons and they all had the most exquisite, highly crafted

0:37:200:37:26

lacquer work and the best of French artists and artisans and craftsmen

0:37:260:37:31

working on these interiors.

0:37:310:37:34

But style wasn't everything.

0:37:410:37:43

The decisive factor was speed.

0:37:430:37:46

Sleek, chic and superfast, the Normandie had no rival...

0:37:460:37:53

..or at least until 1936, when the Queen Mary appeared on the horizon.

0:37:550:38:02

'The coming of the Queen Mary inaugurates one of

0:38:020:38:04

'the greatest races of all time.

0:38:040:38:07

'Which ship will turn out to be the faster, the Normandie or the Queen?

0:38:070:38:10

'That is the question of the hour.'

0:38:100:38:12

In a matter of months

0:38:120:38:13

the Queen Mary had decisively answered that question.

0:38:130:38:17

She smashed the Normandie's transatlantic record,

0:38:170:38:20

winning for Britain the honour known as the Blue Riband.

0:38:200:38:23

The contest between the two ships, and the two countries,

0:38:230:38:27

was now on in earnest.

0:38:270:38:28

'The Normandie has gone into dry dock at Le Havre

0:38:280:38:31

'to have new propellers fitted, which it is thought may enable her

0:38:310:38:34

'to approach the Queen Mary in speed.'

0:38:340:38:36

In 1937, the refitted Normandie snatched the Blue Riband back again.

0:38:360:38:43

But it was a short-lived victory.

0:38:430:38:45

'The great French liner Normandie has had her New York triumphs

0:38:450:38:48

'and her record-breaking voyages, but this time it's the turn of her

0:38:480:38:51

'British rival the Queen Mary, undisputed Queen of the Atlantic.'

0:38:510:38:55

The Queen Mary was a potent projection of national identity

0:38:550:39:01

in an era of intense global rivalry.

0:39:010:39:04

It was a competition that was played out in the air

0:39:060:39:09

as well as on the sea.

0:39:090:39:11

The Schneider Trophy was the Formula One of its times.

0:39:130:39:18

A worldwide event that combined cutting-edge technology

0:39:180:39:22

with intense international rivalry.

0:39:220:39:26

Seaplanes from America, Italy, Germany, France and Britain

0:39:260:39:31

raced in front of crowds of up to a quarter of a million people.

0:39:310:39:35

These thoroughbreds of the skies broke record after record,

0:39:350:39:40

but one machine emerged triumphant over all the rest.

0:39:400:39:45

The Supermarine S.6B is the most, glamorous, dynamic, beautiful,

0:39:470:39:53

thrilling machine and object that emerged from British workshops,

0:39:530:39:57

British industry in the 1930s.

0:39:570:39:59

It's a very, very beautiful object indeed.

0:39:590:40:03

It sits on floats because it flies from water,

0:40:030:40:05

it has the thinnest possible wing you can imagine,

0:40:050:40:08

and it's gloriously streamlined.

0:40:080:40:11

In fact, it's so streamlined, and the detailings of the streamlining

0:40:110:40:14

are such that if you look at it in a certain way,

0:40:140:40:17

it looks like some sort of piece of Art Deco jewellery.

0:40:170:40:20

If you had said this Reginald Mitchell, its designer,

0:40:220:40:25

he'd have just kicked you out of his office, I mean,

0:40:250:40:28

literally kicked you, booted you up the bum and out of his office door,

0:40:280:40:32

because Mitchell was a no-nonsense man from the Black Country

0:40:320:40:36

and he didn't like fancy talk about art and had no interest.

0:40:360:40:40

He said he had no interest in styling.

0:40:400:40:42

His only interest was in efficiency, in aerodynamics

0:40:420:40:47

and he certainly got it right.

0:40:470:40:49

The Supermarine S.6B not only won the Schneider trophy for Britain,

0:40:490:40:54

but it took the world speed record - 407.5, love it,

0:40:540:41:00

407.5 miles an hour.

0:41:000:41:02

The fastest machine in the world!

0:41:020:41:05

The Supermarine S.6B represented the cutting edge of aerodynamic

0:41:080:41:13

technology and was the direct predecessor of the Spitfire fighter.

0:41:130:41:19

But it was American designers who would fully exploit

0:41:220:41:25

the consumer potential of streamlining.

0:41:250:41:28

Streamlining is quintessentially American. What happened was

0:41:280:41:33

interior designers and architects started to look to

0:41:330:41:36

science and technology

0:41:360:41:38

and take their lead from the study of aerodynamics,

0:41:380:41:41

and they looked at this and they thought,

0:41:410:41:43

"Art Deco is far too luxurious, it has too much ornament,"

0:41:430:41:47

they called it "an infection of ornament."

0:41:470:41:49

There is a sense here that what is American is this machine know-how,

0:41:520:41:56

this practical use of things,

0:41:560:41:59

this is very much about paring down from these luxury ornaments,

0:41:590:42:02

to making a kind of democratic art, something that was fit for purpose,

0:42:020:42:07

something that could speed people into the future.

0:42:070:42:11

There's a car produced in round about '33, it's Chrysler's Airflow car,

0:42:110:42:17

and it personified, or it symbolised, that streamlined idea.

0:42:170:42:20

Not only was it sort of curved from bonnet right through to boot,

0:42:200:42:26

the idea of a continuous shape that the air would move over,

0:42:260:42:29

it also had wonderful chrome strips on it and I think the origin of that

0:42:290:42:34

was probably the cartoon figures that have little lines

0:42:340:42:37

behind them suggesting that they're whooshing across the page,

0:42:370:42:41

the chrome strips again symbolic of the idea of speed.

0:42:410:42:44

The aesthetics of streamlining were hugely important.

0:42:520:42:56

It was the look that counted,

0:42:560:42:59

a look that had soon spread from transportation

0:42:590:43:02

to a dazzling range of consumer products.

0:43:020:43:05

Streamlining is a style that makes things look functional,

0:43:070:43:11

but when you see the streamline style added to say a vacuum cleaner

0:43:110:43:15

or a toaster it doesn't actually make it more functional.

0:43:150:43:19

But it actually gives it that appearance of speed and dynamism.

0:43:220:43:26

Even buildings,

0:43:260:43:27

the ultimate static objects, were built to look fast.

0:43:270:43:32

Streamlined architecture was particularly popular

0:43:320:43:35

in new seaside developments such as Miami's South Beach.

0:43:350:43:39

Buildings are designed to look like ocean liners

0:43:390:43:42

with decks and portholes.

0:43:420:43:46

They even have the horizontal speed strips

0:43:460:43:49

originally seen in the chrome trim on cars.

0:43:490:43:52

Streamlining expressed the unstoppable momentum

0:43:520:43:56

of America itself.

0:43:560:43:58

This is not Miami.

0:44:080:44:11

It's Morecambe.

0:44:130:44:16

But the parallels are unmistakable.

0:44:160:44:20

Built in 1933, the Midland Hotel

0:44:200:44:24

brought American-style streamlined glamour to the Lancashire seaside.

0:44:240:44:29

It was a great boom time for resorts.

0:44:310:44:32

You get the building of fantastic seaside hotels,

0:44:320:44:35

like the Midland Hotel in Morecambe.

0:44:350:44:38

If you're attracting clients, do you want to look like a Victorian palace?

0:44:380:44:44

Not particularly. You want to give a sense of modernity.

0:44:440:44:47

Buildings need to look Moderne.

0:44:470:44:51

The new Art Deco-styled resorts

0:44:540:44:57

were the product of a transport revolution.

0:44:570:45:00

Britain was on the move. For example, in 1919

0:45:040:45:07

there were a quarter of a million, 250,000 cars.

0:45:070:45:11

By 1929, ten years later, there were 1.5 million cars.

0:45:110:45:16

People were on the move and as they were liberated, as they were able

0:45:160:45:21

to move out, they moved to the seaside, they moved to the country.

0:45:210:45:24

That sense of being able to escape,

0:45:260:45:28

that sense of being able to get away from it, was the future.

0:45:280:45:33

Perhaps even more than the automobile,

0:45:330:45:35

the railway came to define the Deco-styled great escape.

0:45:350:45:40

Posters are the great evocative element of this period.

0:45:400:45:44

You were encouraged to travel by, you know, the Art Deco style.

0:45:440:45:47

Posters showing "Look how great these places are.

0:45:470:45:50

"This is the great train you can go on.

0:45:500:45:52

"Come with us. We'll take you to the English Riviera.

0:45:520:45:55

"We'll take you to North Wales. We'll take you to the Lake District.

0:45:550:45:58

"We'll take you to the Highlands of Scotland."

0:45:580:46:01

It was all about what we can do and the fantasy of what we'd like to do.

0:46:010:46:07

Fantasy was rapidly becoming a reality.

0:46:070:46:10

Mandatory holiday pay was introduced in 1936,

0:46:100:46:14

the same year as working hours were reduced.

0:46:140:46:18

Suddenly holidays were within the reach of ordinary families.

0:46:180:46:23

The British were ready to play.

0:46:230:46:26

You have mass recreation for the first time, you have paid holidays,

0:46:260:46:30

and suddenly people can get down to the seaside,

0:46:300:46:33

they can go for their week and they can have fun.

0:46:330:46:38

And above all, beyond all, Deco architecture is fun.

0:46:380:46:42

Fun is what places like Saltdean Lido near Brighton

0:46:480:46:52

were in the business of providing.

0:46:520:46:55

Built in 1938, it's a pure projection of

0:46:550:46:59

American streamlined glamour.

0:46:590:47:01

Saltdean Lido is a great example of that sunshine architecture.

0:47:040:47:07

The sort of clean lines, the white walls, the streamlined curves

0:47:090:47:15

of what was the coming resort.

0:47:150:47:17

It is sunshine architecture and lidos all over the country, in fact,

0:47:170:47:22

were popping up that were very heavily influenced by Deco ideas and

0:47:220:47:27

that I think is because along with the sunshine architecture

0:47:270:47:30

went a love for sunshine, for health and fitness.

0:47:300:47:33

'The greatest place of all for the sun-worshippers of today

0:47:330:47:36

'is by the sea and don't the ladies know it!

0:47:360:47:40

'Just look at these charming costumes.

0:47:400:47:42

'Our cameraman missed the last train back, but what an excuse he had.

0:47:420:47:47

'Between ourselves, these are the super, super models of today,

0:47:500:47:54

'the era of the cult of the sun.'

0:47:540:47:57

Swimming and sunbathing were all the rage.

0:48:050:48:09

In 1926, the young American Gertrude Ederle swam across the Channel,

0:48:090:48:16

smashing the then male-held record by two hours.

0:48:160:48:21

Female achievement was also celebrated by

0:48:230:48:26

the Women's League of Health and Beauty.

0:48:260:48:28

With 170,000 members it popularised physical fitness.

0:48:300:48:36

This obsession with the body beautiful and the fashion

0:48:390:48:42

for revealing costumes was more than just a superficial fad.

0:48:420:48:49

Machine-Age streamlining, the interconnected ideas of

0:48:490:48:53

efficiency and mass production, was seen as a model for human beings.

0:48:530:49:00

Streamlining was definitely the pursuit of an idea of perfect form

0:49:000:49:04

that was appropriate to the age,

0:49:040:49:06

an age in which speed, dynamism and modernity were uppermost.

0:49:060:49:11

I think that idea does extend to the human body as well,

0:49:110:49:14

particularly for women at this time.

0:49:140:49:17

I think the New Woman with the bob

0:49:170:49:20

and the clinging dress was a streamlined form.

0:49:200:49:24

In the age of glamour even pets became streamlined.

0:49:260:49:30

The idea of machine-like human perfection

0:49:360:49:41

became a kind of fetish in the 1930s.

0:49:410:49:44

This was an era of mass displays in which hundreds, sometimes thousands

0:49:440:49:50

of bodies, acted like uniform parts in a streamlined production process.

0:49:500:49:55

People were fascinated with the idea of the body,

0:50:060:50:10

strength, power and movement, and I think Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia

0:50:100:50:15

is a really good example of this fascination.

0:50:150:50:20

Entirely unconnected to the narrative of the documentary about

0:50:200:50:24

the Olympics, the 1936 Olympics,

0:50:240:50:26

the film begins with scenes of women performing calisthenics,

0:50:260:50:30

naked women performing calisthenics,

0:50:300:50:32

and it's not really that far from the kind of aesthetics that

0:50:320:50:37

Busby Berkeley had been achieving in Gold Diggers Of 1933, for example.

0:50:370:50:41

The interwar years were dominated by an idea that human beings

0:50:510:50:56

could be made as perfect as the machines that surrounded them.

0:50:560:51:02

This was the dark side of the Age of Glamour.

0:51:020:51:06

Eugenics seeks to apply the known laws of heredity, so as to prevent

0:51:070:51:11

the degeneration of the race and improve its inborn qualities.

0:51:110:51:16

Not all mental deficiency is hereditary,

0:51:160:51:19

but heredity accounts for more of the mild feeble-minded types.

0:51:190:51:22

If carefully trained, they can be taught simple routine tasks.

0:51:220:51:26

But it would have been better by far, if they had never been born.

0:51:270:51:31

Although the Eugenics Movement was founded in Britain,

0:51:330:51:37

it found its most extreme expression in Nazi Germany and the USA.

0:51:370:51:43

By the time of World War Two, over 40,000 American citizens

0:51:430:51:47

had been sterilised without their consent.

0:51:470:51:51

Eugenics affected many different areas of American life

0:51:510:51:55

including, controversially, design.

0:51:550:51:59

Most people would just think of streamlining as a design style,

0:51:590:52:03

but, in fact, beneath that is an ideology that

0:52:030:52:07

does connect it to eugenics.

0:52:070:52:08

Eugenics wanted to redesign society

0:52:080:52:12

and the industrial designers themselves very much believed in eugenic progress.

0:52:120:52:19

They would use terms like as "parasitic drag", for example,

0:52:190:52:22

as something that held back the object, that held back society.

0:52:220:52:27

They would look at pure bred forms such as the greyhound

0:52:270:52:31

as an example of eugenic thoroughbreds

0:52:310:52:36

to implement into their designs.

0:52:360:52:40

There are a lot of parallels between the two -

0:52:400:52:42

ideas of the future, the future perfect form,

0:52:420:52:45

a more streamlined body, a more streamlined lifestyle.

0:52:450:52:48

For American designers,

0:52:480:52:51

eugenics was a design template not a political ideology.

0:52:510:52:57

They had only one aim...

0:52:580:53:00

..to sell.

0:53:020:53:04

The vision of a streamlined consumer paradise

0:53:110:53:14

became real with the World's Fair held in New York in 1939.

0:53:140:53:20

Attracting over 44 million visitors,

0:53:250:53:28

it was the largest such event ever held.

0:53:280:53:32

The 1939 World's Fair

0:53:350:53:37

was a fascinating moment I think in the history of modern design.

0:53:370:53:41

Very, very different from Paris 1925 which had been elite, luxurious

0:53:410:53:46

and highly decorative.

0:53:460:53:48

By '39 we've moved to quite a different style. It's much simpler,

0:53:480:53:53

much more streamlined, even the buildings are streamlined,

0:53:530:53:57

rounded forms, and the exhibition is dominated, interestingly, not

0:53:570:54:01

by the work of architects or decorators,

0:54:010:54:06

but now by industrial designers.

0:54:060:54:08

And the designers are designing things like "The World of Tomorrow,"

0:54:080:54:11

the car of tomorrow.

0:54:110:54:13

'Safe distance between cars is maintained by

0:54:150:54:18

'automatic radio control.

0:54:180:54:21

'Curved sides assist the driver in keeping his car

0:54:210:54:24

'within the proper lane under all circumstances.

0:54:240:54:28

'The keynote of this motorway - safety.'

0:54:300:54:34

It's an absolutely optimistic American view of the future.

0:54:340:54:38

That's the most remarkable thing I've ever seen.

0:54:380:54:42

But while America was looking forward to "The World of Tomorrow,"

0:54:420:54:47

Europe was staring into the abyss.

0:54:470:54:50

This was not the moment for a light-hearted style.

0:54:560:54:59

Deco had become decadent.

0:54:590:55:03

By 1939 Deco is a kind of, it's an aging whore.

0:55:030:55:07

It's unfaithful, it's avaricious,

0:55:070:55:10

it's desperate for anything which will make it look young,

0:55:100:55:13

and it's a failing architecture

0:55:130:55:15

and that's because the whole mood of the times has changed.

0:55:150:55:20

In September 1939, just a year after her record-breaking triumph,

0:55:200:55:25

the Queen Mary slipped back into New York.

0:55:250:55:29

For her celebrity passengers,

0:55:290:55:31

this had been a more eventful voyage than usual.

0:55:310:55:35

-Well, Mr Warner I think we're very lucky getting back here safely, don't you?

-I don't know about that.

0:55:350:55:41

Were you worried?

0:55:410:55:43

-Of being torpedoed?

-No. Torpedoed?

0:55:430:55:45

Why I didn't have the slightest thought of being torpedoed.

0:55:450:55:48

-I didn't either. I didn't sleep a second.

-Oh, I did.

0:55:480:55:50

It didn't bother me. Of course, I'm of the hardy type.

0:55:500:55:53

Yeah, but you see I'm serious, so I'm not nervous.

0:55:530:55:56

While the Queen Mary was at sea,

0:56:000:56:02

war had been declared between Britain and Germany.

0:56:020:56:06

The liner's luxurious Art Deco drawing rooms and libraries

0:56:060:56:10

had been crammed with temporary cots in case of U-boat attack.

0:56:100:56:15

It was an omen of things to come.

0:56:150:56:18

The glamorous Queen Mary

0:56:180:56:20

now prepared to begin a new life as a troop ship.

0:56:200:56:24

If you want to think perhaps of one example of that shift from

0:56:260:56:31

a belief in luxury and glamour

0:56:310:56:33

to a much more functional and rather drab world of war,

0:56:330:56:37

the Queen Mary is the most wonderful example.

0:56:370:56:39

You move from it depicting all those wonderful qualities

0:56:390:56:42

to it being stripped out for use in war, battleship grey.

0:56:420:56:46

The Grey Ghost.

0:56:480:56:50

The contrast is complete and I think the world has changed.

0:56:500:56:54

This would be an age of austerity,

0:56:570:57:01

an age of service and sacrifice.

0:57:010:57:05

But perhaps there would be one final decisive expression

0:57:050:57:09

of British Art Deco.

0:57:090:57:12

I always think ironically one of the best Art Deco objects

0:57:130:57:17

the British ever made was the Spitfire.

0:57:170:57:19

'To the man in the street perhaps the most amazing machine is the Spitfire.

0:57:190:57:23

'A land version of the famous seaplanes that won the Schneider Trophy.'

0:57:230:57:26

It is a wonderful, fluid, perfect definition of streamlining.

0:57:260:57:31

It's a wonderful aeroplane, probably one of the best aeroplanes made.

0:57:310:57:35

It's also one of the prettiest.

0:57:350:57:37

But in a sense, it's an indication of where things were going.

0:57:400:57:44

You know, we were by that time

0:57:460:57:48

moving towards another global conflict.

0:57:480:57:51

How can you have faith in a future which promises your extinction?

0:57:580:58:03

How can you, sort of, look for fun and frivolity

0:58:030:58:06

when actually what you've got to look for is survival?

0:58:060:58:09

What happened in 1939 is that people realised that there was no escape,

0:58:090:58:13

the future had caught up with us.

0:58:130:58:15

Art Deco's moment in the sun might have been short-lived,

0:58:250:58:29

but it shone all the more brilliantly for it.

0:58:290:58:32

Life for most might often have been grey.

0:58:320:58:35

It might sometimes even have been grim.

0:58:350:58:38

But just occasionally it could also be defiantly, deliciously glamorous.

0:58:380:58:44

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

0:58:590:59:01

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0:59:010:59:03

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