Monday
Feb082010
Warning - retro may be hazardous to your health
Mon, 8 Feb 2010
Knotty pine bookcases and water plants in bottles? Check! Sheep skins on carpet? Check! Cactus western print fabric and obligatory director's chair? Check! Bad hair cut? Check! Corduroy shirt over check shirt, desert boots and hot whisky with lemon and cinnamon sticks? Check-a-rooney! Pipe and book. Must be the 70s! Could this guy be any more cool? (You don't have to answer. And is it my imagination or does he look like Seinfeld?) If he has kept up the pipe smoking since the photo was taken he's probably dead by now. Just goes to show that everything retro isn't good! Scans from The Apartment Book, by the editors of Apartment Life magazine, Meredith Corporation, 1980.
Reader Comments (16)
How 70s is the food styling in that last photo?! Brilliant.
Seinfeld... the beginnings?
There are things I really like a lot in all the photos, a bit less of their 'too much' and they actually look like (mostly) very comfy places to live in, and those masks in the end... well, I actually adore those
Oh, lovely! The past is so comfortable. I swear, I'm beginning to worry about all the (silk) plants I have scattered about -- is it unforgiveably retro to have three trees in my bedroom? Otherwise... looks an awful lot like today. Love the red lamp/reading bucket! Not to mention the gorgeous graphic umbrella ceiling light. Done that, too! The spaced industrial pendant lamps, also good. You had a theme!
Although sometimes it's too much, I like the pastel colors of the 70s.
It's a wonder there's not more people in your images. The magazine images I have seen from the '70's (I was into Dolly back then) always had women in flowing caftans draped over the furniture. Can't say it was our best decorating decade. I think if orange was the only colour left on earth I wouldn't be able to have it in my home. I grew up in a house with mission brown trim on the exterior and orange carpet and curtains on the interior. Sounds hideous now. It wasn't too bad, but enough orange.
GREAT POST! Feeling so nostalgic now!
1. He does look like Seinfeld! Too funny!
2. The Fiorrucci poster (sigh) I miss that store in NYC, total quintessential late 70s and 80s.
Ok, count with me the many times a magazine stylist has lead me astray. One: fooling me that I could have sewing machine, typewriter (!) and drawing board in a 3'x3' space, and work there too; two: making me think I could afford rent AND that red lamp; three: inspiring me to happily turn a closet into a tiny, tiny kitchen; four: making me think two (and more!) people could actually EAT at a table that small; five: not warning me that to place two pieces of a sectional together without attaching them on the bottom is a sure lead in to cracking your head on the floor (because you can't sit on that duo without falling thru).
But, I was young and inexperienced in the ways of photo styling, and I wanted to believe the pictures. What's my excuse now?
Note to self: take antlers off wall before someone loses an eye...
These are a HOOT!! Except what the hell is that loaf thing on the coffee table in the last photo? GROSS!!
Priscilla - LOL!!!
Wow! Great post. I never realized how much "hoarding" was a decor theme in the 70s. The basics (furniture, etc.) haven't changed much since then, but interiors today contain about .00003% of the "stuff" shown here. And what was with the tablescapes? Maybe you have to be experimenting with acid or cocaine to get it.
Well, I'm off to hollow out a loaf of bread and fill it with spinach dip and hard-boiled eggs...Maybe I should garnish that with an entire bottle of sliced pickles, a carton of whole radishes, and two heads of lettuce? What do you think?
Wow. Gotta love the 70's/80's. This post made me laugh out loud. The houseplants look like they're about to come alive and eat someone. Hopefully the dude with the pipe.
I was 16 the first time I ever went into the Fiorucci store in NY and, after looking around, was wondering if I was going to be asked for my ID or give them a dollar for "browsing". I miss the NY of the late 70's
Ohhhh, the highwaisted jeans, the rattan, the ferns...mom, is that you?
The plants. THE PLANTS!
Oh how I loved that book back in the day! I still have that fold-up table in my clippings file!
Union Tom: that's funny, charge you a dollar! I thought the people in Fiorucci were going to ask me to LEAVE (not cool enough, didn't they know I had a tiny kitchen in a closet?!).
I need those red cube shelves !