Retrolounge

August 12, 2003 12:12 PM

Retrolounge is a compendium of the next new thing in design, art, architecture and fashion. I kid! Truly, go-go boots make me swoon.
posted by pedantic (7 comments total)

I can tell I will be here for hours, if not days. I already found this for the MeFi Vegas folks.
posted by JanetLand at 12:50 PM on August 12, 2003

Old thought: fashion recycles every 20-30 years. What my mom & dad wore as teens returned during my high school years.

New thought: fashion has less new looks, just newer materials being produced that make older fashions a new style again. This is cool in todays clothing general: nothing is out of fashion, just the material.
posted by thomcatspike at 12:54 PM on August 12, 2003

compendium of the next new thing in design, art, architecture and fashion.

There are always scores of nobodies vomiting retro, wanting it to be the next thing.

It's not, it's old and the new is passing you by.
posted by the fire you left me at 1:08 PM on August 12, 2003

Ha! Space Age was special. It was top to bottom re-design for the future. In the few *good quality* Space Age buildings still around, not the tacky crap usually featured, ordinary things like concrete became something special. Artistically molded sometimes see-through blocks casting interesting shadows, wildly curving walls with dynamic textures and shapes. Even a house could look "futuristic", not just utilitarian or uniform.
The whole building was designed for style and comfort. Not the uniform crackerbox style of Levittown before it, or the equally cheapened down uniformity of the Frank Lloyd Wright ranch house. Or the current over angled over priced condo monstrosity made from stucco and chicken wire.

And when was the last time you visited someone's house and they had a sculpture in it? Even a sort of silly "Modern Art" sculpture, most likely in a fountain, lent a lot of class to "The Bachelor Pad". Hi-Fi stereo wired through the walls and ceiling, easily extrapolated to high tech today, unusual lighting and lights. Civility and art in architecture and living.

And why did it come about? Because for a brief time, people had a luxurious amount of income compared to what they had before. And people wanted *style*, not just a place to eat and sleep when they weren't at work.
And having a Space Age home meant that you had "made it." It was the Playboy philosophy in a nutshell.

It was also an explosion in the arts. Music, especially, was open to tremendous experimentation, yet near the mainstream. Electronic music was raw and exotic and alien, and it hadn't been softened and normalized. It attacked the ear with an explosion of style, like Space Age design attacked the eye.

And when it all ended, we all lost. We lost the future, the Space Age where anything was possible. People turned inward again, to the dull, safe and utilitarian.

Wanting it back means looking forward to the future again.
posted by kablam at 3:46 PM on August 12, 2003

[sniff] That was a beautiful speech, kablam.
posted by MrBaliHai at 3:58 PM on August 12, 2003

Sigh. I'm with blam.
posted by kevspace at 7:14 PM on August 12, 2003

I'll subscribe to that newsletter.
posted by pedantic at 9:01 PM on August 12, 2003