Art Deco, which first appeared in Paris in the 1910s, had its big showcase in 1925 at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris — a world's fair dedicated entirely to demonstrating that modern design could be luxurious, optimistic, and distinctly of its time. The name came later; in 1925, it went by names like "style moderne."

The timing was precise. Europe had survived the First World War and was experiencing a decade of deliberate forgetting. Art Nouveau's organic curves had belonged to the Belle Époque; the new style needed harder edges, cleaner geometry, a visual language that felt like the future rather than memory. Architects, jewelers, fashion designers, and typographers converged on the same vocabulary: symmetrical geometry, gold and silver metallics, sunburst radiating lines, stepped forms.

The style crossed the Atlantic and became American in a specific way. The Chrysler Building (1930), the Empire State Building (1931), Rockefeller Center (1933) — New York's skyline was built in Art Deco. The visual language of Jazz Age aspiration was inseparable from Art Deco.

The Great Depression did not kill it — it made it more democratic. The streamlined variant, Streamline Moderne, applied the same geometric optimism to mass-produced objects: radios, refrigerators, toasters. Art Deco became the aesthetic of recovery, the design language that said the future was still worth building.

The term "Art Deco" was not used at the time — "Art déco" first appeared in print in 1966, in the title of an exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, then was popularized by historian Bevis Hillier in his 1968 book Art Deco of the 20s and 30s. In its heyday the style went by names like "style moderne." Source ↗