You may have discovered a darling little television program called Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. There's much to enjoy here. It's a whodunit, which I adore (we'll talk about my Sherlock addiction in a future post). The lead character and much of the cast is female, which is refreshing. But what really drew me in was the setting: 1920s-era Melbourne, Australia. Fortuitously, Miss Fisher has loads of cash and is a real clothes horse, so they go nuts dressing her in the most amazing outfits from that era.
The clothes are great, the hair is great, but one of my favorite aspects of the 1920s is the Art Deco style. According to our friends at Wiki, Art Deco peaked in the 1920s. Like many things beyond ultra cool and fashionable, this art style originated in France. It features bold colors and uncluttered geometric shapes. Its emphasis on the glory of the man-made often renders something of an homage to the mechanical and industrial boom taking place in society after World War I.
The 1920s were a pivotal era, ushering in a phenomenal amount of societal change in a relatively short time. It's often said the invention of the mobile phone and the Internet have impacted society in an unprecedented way. But consider the contributions of the Roaring Twenties: the impact of electricity, and the automobile. And with the coming of electricity, the domino effect of mass media in the form of radio and later, television and movies, both silent and talkie. Factor in the perfect media storm of electricity, media, and entertainment that spawned the cult of celebrity worship that dominates our current news cycle. They're all still going strong more than one hundred years after their debut. It's only fitting that such a magnificent age is represented by such a magnificent artistic style.
This post originally appeared during my participation in the 2016 A to Z Blog Challenge.
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