Vintage View: Get into the swing of things with art deco

Right now we all need some Benny Goodman art deco roar and swing, according to Kya deLongchamps

That jazz feeling. Rich colour, gilded metal and a decidedly salon feel. Art deco can be stirred up in a number of delicious cocktails of old and new. Picture: Audenza

There was a time when art deco, for all its tailcoat and trombone chic, was not regarded as truly antique. It didn’t tango over the 100-year-old mark for starters. Today, it seems to be one of the few areas of era-specific styling to have maintained its standing with collectors, sparking the interest of younger buyers otherwise hypnotised by mid-century certainty.

The look strode onto the national stage in 1925 following the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts (Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes) in Paris. Aesthetically lighter and fundamentally younger in spirit than its safe, mahogany antecedents weighed down by 19th-century expectations, deco is a well-educated girl, hair bobbed, throwing off her stays, but still high society-acceptable. Watch Baz Luhrmann’s Gatsby (2013) — the look is all there in iridescent, decadent drama and detail with a pulse-racing score.