Populuxe was a consumer culture and aesthetic in the United States popular in the 1950s and 1960s. The term populuxe is a portmanteau of popular and luxury. [1]
The style evoked a sense of luxury with the design of consumer goods such as radios and clocks typically featuring pastel-colored plastic in curved and angular shapes and metalized plastic trim that simulated chrome. Structures commonly used pastels, geometric shapes, and surfaces of stucco, sheet metal, and often stainless steel.
Populuxe emerged after people began seeing semi-luxury commodities as luxury ware and mass consumer goods. [2] It is also interpreted as a mass culture that desired luxury finishes on everyday material goods. [3] It is said to be an offshoot of Fordism in the early 20th century [2] and was also facilitated by the start of the emulative celebrity culture. [4]
The work of various artists, designers, graphic designers, furniture designers, interior designers, and architects is associated with the populuxe movement. Populuxe is associated with consumerism and overlaps with mid-century modern architecture, Streamline Moderne, Googie architecture (Doo Wop architecture), and other futuristic and Space Age influenced design aesthetics that were futurist, technology-focused, and optimistic in nature. [1]
Costume or fashion jewelry includes a range of decorative items worn for personal adornment that are manufactured as less expensive ornamentation to complement a particular fashionable outfit or garment as opposed to "real" (fine) jewelry, which is more costly and which may be regarded primarily as collectibles, keepsakes, or investments. From the outset, costume jewelry — also known as fashion jewelry — paralleled the styles of its more precious fine counterparts.
Philippe Starck is a French industrial architect and designer known for his wide range of designs, including interior design, architecture, household objects, furniture, boats and other vehicles. His most popular pieces were made in the 1980s and the 1990s.
Consumerism is a social and economic order in which the aspirations of many individuals include the acquisition of goods and services beyond those necessary for survival or traditional displays of status. It emerged in Western Europe before the Industrial Revolution and became widespread around 1900. In economics, consumerism refers to policies that emphasize consumption. It is the consideration that the free choice of consumers should strongly inform the choice by manufacturers of what is produced and how, and therefore influence the economic organization of a society.
Commercial art is the art of creative services, referring to art created for commercial purposes, primarily advertising. Commercial art uses a variety of platforms for viewers with the intent of promoting the sale and interest of products, services, and ideas. It relies on the iconic image to enhance recall and favorable recognition for a product or service. An example of a product could be a magazine ad promoting a new soda through complementary colors, a catchy message, and appealing illustrative features. Another example could be promoting the prevention of global warming by encouraging people to walk or ride a bike instead of driving in an eye catching poster. It communicates something specific to an audience.
Googie architecture is a type of futurist architecture influenced by car culture, jets, the Atomic Age and the Space Age. It originated in Southern California from the Streamline Moderne architecture of the 1930s, and was popular in the United States from roughly 1945 to the early 1970s.
Ray-Ban is a brand of luxury sunglasses and eyeglasses created in 1936 by Bausch & Lomb. The brand is best known for its Wayfarer and Aviator lines of sunglasses. In 1999, Bausch & Lomb sold the brand to Italian eyewear conglomerate Luxottica Group for a reported $640 million.
In economics, a luxury good is a good for which demand increases more than what is proportional as income rises, so that expenditures on the good become a more significant proportion of overall spending. Luxury goods are in contrast to necessity goods, where demand increases proportionally less than income. Luxury goods is often used synonymously with superior goods.
The decorative arts are arts or crafts whose aim is the design and manufacture of objects that are both beautiful and functional. This includes most of the objects for the interiors of buildings, as well as interior design, but typically excludes architecture. Ceramic art, metalwork, furniture, jewellery, fashion, various forms of the textile arts and glassware are major groupings.
A blobject is a design product, often a brightly-coloured household object which has smooth curves and no sharp edges. The word is a portmanteau of "blob" and "object".
Automotive design is the process of developing the appearance of motor vehicles, including automobiles, motorcycles, trucks, buses, coaches, and vans.
Raygun Gothic is a catchall term for a visual and architectural style that, when applied to retrofuturistic science fiction environments, incorporates various aspects of the Googie, Streamline Moderne, and Art Deco architectural styles. Academic Lance Olsen has characterised Raygun Gothic as "a tomorrow that never was". It is inspired by Space Age, raypunk, and atompunk subcultures.
Fashion design is the art of applying design, aesthetics, clothing construction and natural beauty to clothing and its accessories. It is influenced by culture and different trends and has varied over time and place. "A fashion designer creates clothing, including dresses, suits, pants, and skirts, and accessories like shoes and handbags, for consumers. He or she can specialize in clothing, accessory, or jewelry design, or may work in more than one of these areas."
The consumer revolution refers to the period from approximately 1600 to 1750 in England in which there was a marked increase in the consumption and variety of luxury goods and products by individuals from different economic and social backgrounds. The consumer revolution marked a departure from the traditional mode of life that was dominated by frugality and scarcity to one of increasingly mass consumption in society.
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create and store value as brand equity for the object identified, to the benefit of the brand's customers, its owners and shareholders. Brand names are sometimes distinguished from generic or store brands.
Teague is a global design consultancy headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Established in 1926 by Walter Dorwin Teague, Teague is known for its design contributions through the disciplines of product design, interaction design, environmental design, and mechanical design. The company is privately held and is particularly recognized for its work in aviation and consumer goods, done for clients such as The Boeing Company, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Samsung and Panasonic.
The Wildwoods Shore Resort Historic District, or Doo Wop Motel District, is an area in The Wildwoods, New Jersey, that was home to over 300 motels built during the Doo-Wop era of the 1950s and 1960s. Officially recognized as a historic district by the State of New Jersey, it lies primarily in the municipality of Wildwood Crest, along a two-mile stretch between Atlantic and Ocean avenues, and includes areas in Wildwood and North Wildwood. The term doo-wop was coined by Cape May's Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts in the early 1990s to describe the unique, space-age architectural style, which is also referred to as the Googie or populuxe style.
In design, the Atomic Age is the period roughly corresponding from 1940 to 1963, when concerns about nuclear war dominated Western society during the Cold War. Architecture, industrial design, commercial design, interior design, and fine arts were all influenced by the themes of atomic science, as well as the Space Age, which coincided with that period. Atomic Age design became popular and instantly recognizable, with a use of atomic motifs and space age symbols.
The Memphis Group, also known as Memphis Milano, was an Italian design and architecture group founded by Ettore Sottsass. It was active from 1980 to 1987. The group designed postmodern furniture, lighting, fabrics, carpets, ceramics, glass and metal objects.
Window shopping, sometimes called browsing, refers to an activity in which a consumer browses through or examines a store's merchandise as a form of leisure or external search behaviour without a current intent to buy. Depending on the individual, window shopping can be a pastime or be used to obtain information about a product's development, brand differences, or sale prices.