On an otherwise unremarkable July evening in 2007, a show about a dashing 1960s Madison Avenue advertising executive hit the airwaves. Few could have predicted the seismic shift that would follow, but with its matinee-idol cast, neatly tailored costumes and meticulously researched sets, Mad Men immediately dominated the cultural conversation. In the years between the show’s premiere and its finale in 2015, hemlines went A-line and ties got skinny; brown liquor and classic cocktails became de rigueur on bar menus. And in the design world, the show’s aesthetic became the aesthetic. Everyone from urban cognoscenti to suburban moms was clamoring for the same thing. Say it with me now: midcentury modern.
It’s not that demand didn’t exist before the show aired. High-end collectors had always sought iconic pieces from the era, but their prohibitive cost and hard-to-source provenance kept the interest niche. The designs were slowly starting to catch on in creative circles when brands like Vitra and Knoll began to reproduce original pieces in the mid 1990s; Design Within Reach opened shop in 1998 and 1stDibs launched in 2000. And retailers like West Elm and CB2, which had pivoted from traditional to midcentury-inspired styles in the early 2000s, were already trying to find favor with younger consumers who began to recognize the style but couldn’t afford the real stuff.
Then Mad Men—and to a lesser extent, the Tom Ford film A Single Man—made their wares not only popular, but cool. “It accelerated that romantic narrative of a time lost,” says Tristan Butterfield, a quiet consultant for luxury design brands and former chief creative officer of Baker-McGuire. “People absorbed [the style] because they liked it, but they weren’t necessarily being faithful to the genre or really understandinging what they were purchasing, and that fueled its popularity as more images began to take hold in the zeitgeist.”
The Eames lounge. The Tulip table. The Arco floor lamp. Normies suddenly coveted the superstar furniture pieces of the 1950s and ’60s. Meanwhile, derivative versions of those works inundated the mass market, becoming the generic look of retail furniture. Herman Miller reported that its business increased by 60 percent in North America over the show’s seven-season run. More remarkable is that the enthusiasm continued long after the Mad Men era had ended. Though the fashion industry eventually turned its back, the design world remained true believers.
Michael Cleghorn, founder and CEO of global forecasting and aesthetic strategy agency MC&Co Trend, notes that the style resonated among consumers who had grown exhausted by the shabby chic and cold Italian minimalism of the 1990s. “Midcentury offered this middle register that was nostalgic and felt confidently human. That is why the cycle ran 25 years rather than five,” he says.
That is until a few years ago, when it seemed the aesthetic winds were shifting even further back in time—to the 1920s and ’30s. Both Pinterest and 1stDibs reported surges in searches for art deco elements last year. Just as midcentury connoisseurs in the 1990s were lashing out against the parallel trends of traditionalism and minimalism, design lovers now are looking for an alternative to the minimalism that has dominated the interiors landscape for the last 20 years. With its moody colors, bold geometric motifs and metallic luster, deco is a natural successor.
A living space by Alfredo Paredes, who grew up admiring art deco in his hometown MiamiBjörn Wallander
“[Midcentury modern] is such a specific language and materiality to a certain color palette—black walnuts and black leathers—it was sort of difficult to decorate with. Because it was so specific and became so popular, it almost became cliché,” says Butterfield, citing the case-study houses that began to come into fashion. “There are still super fans who have found their style, but what’s happening now is that zeitgeist has gone through a prism, and it’s split off in a hundred different directions. Now, you can pick and choose the mix to have a well-curated selection of things. A piece of midcentury might be within that curation, but it isn’t the total look.”
These days, art deco seems to be the refraction that’s generating the most interest. In March, designer and uber-influencer Athena Calderone revealed her new Tribeca apartment, a wood-paneled treasure trove of furnishings and decor pieces in the classic style moderne—it graced the cover of Architectural Digest. Two months earlier at Maison&Objet, New York designer Corey Damen Jenkins collaborated with Eichholtz to debut a new lighting line inspired by the rizz and rhythm of the Jazz Age. At High Point Spring Market in April, the metalsmiths at Thompson introduced a made-to-order gleaming copper range hood that mimics the drape of sumptuous satin. And a month ago, a cache of circa-1930s furnishings and decorative arts—by the likes of Jean-Michel Frank and Paul Dupré-Lafon—from the collection of Jean and Terry de Gunzburg fetched a record-breaking $96 million at auction.
“It’s definitely having a resurgence,” says designer James Dolenc, founder of Chicago interiors firm James Thomas, who will unveil a bedroom inspired by 1920s Orient Express Pullman sleeping cars at the inaugural showhouse at The Mart next week. “My feeling is that it’s because there’s been such a long stretch of pale, organic, quietly layered interiors in the trend-driven world.”
The renewed interest in more maximalist styles may also reflect our technology-focused moment. When art deco arrived on the design scene about 100 years ago, the first World War had ended, and the established order was decimated. After that bleak period, consumption was back in style, and people believed in the promise of technology as a force for progress. Designers rejected immediate historical references and looked to the future—or sometimes to the distant past—with new styles of art and architecture that emphasized machine-made furnishings, modern materials, and sharp, geometric lines. “Historically, the art deco movement was bookended between the opulence of the beaux arts and the austerity of modernism,” says architect Albert Betesh of New York’s Cicognani Betesh Architecture Studio. “Today, the pendulum has swung back in its favor; after decades of soft minimalism, people are yearning for richness in material and detailing. And as we move ever more into the digital realm, there is a certain nostalgia for that machine-age aesthetic.”
Adds New York–based designer Alfredo Paredes, who grew up admiring the style in his hometown Miami: “Art deco was born out of real upheaval, and yet it projected craftsmanship and confidence. That combination still resonates.”
Today, the ascendance of AI, multiple ongoing wars, the rise of authoritarianism, polarization on numerous issues and a new fascination with not-so-quiet luxury is perhaps catapulting us toward a similar reckoning. “In moments of high anxiety, we need to feel human,” says Butterfield.
Cleghorn says that midcentury styles—and specifically their Bauhaus roots—are being reinterpreted in a number of subtle ways, but the need for control in an out-of-control world is playing an outsize psychological role in determining what style will prevail. “From our research, there are three key reactions to the moment,” he explains. “People are searching for control through structure, personal authorship and continuity.” For him, control through structure translates to a return to a soft, curvilinear aesthetic—something that brands like RH and Soho Home have done remarkably well—which also references the art nouveau and later streamlined moderne part of the deco era. “It’s this idea that I don’t have time to come home and relax—I have to take control, whether that’s through color, architecture or an embrace of nostalgia,” he adds. For that reason, he says styles like cubism, modernism and postmodernism—in other words, midcentury styles—are modulating into softer forms. (Cleghorn also cites the rise of the English provincial look, with its florals, ruffles and melange of antiques, as another popular reaction. Where West Elm catapulted midcentury to the masses, perhaps Greenrow will do the same for traditionalism.)
That doesn’t mean designers are churning out carbon copies of those looks. The new iteration of art deco is decidedly less theatrical—a little rounder rather than sharp. “It’s not the hard, angular part—it’s more Chrysler Building than Empire State Building,” says Cleghorn.
It’s also full of unexpected references.“The trick is reinterpreting the core characteristics through a contemporary lens and using them sparingly and strategically,” says Betesh. “This could be in the selection of materials and their juxtaposition—dark woods, exotic marble, polished metals and glossy lacquer—or perhaps manifested in craft: Think inlays, marquetry, plaster bas-relief and decorative painting.”
Marine Crosta, co-founder of London-based Crosta Smith Gallery, has seen an uptick in interest in designer pieces, particularly French art deco, that had once only been sought out by serious collectors. “There is undoubtedly a new and boiling enthusiasm,” she says. “What has shifted is the visibility and accessibility of that market. Careful restoration is essential, but subtle updates such as fresh upholstery can bring a piece into dialogue with contemporary interiors, often with simpler backdrops and fewer competing elements. That shift naturally makes them feel current without altering their character.”
Others, like Damen Jenkins, prefer to play up the drama with a steadying eye. “Art deco endures because it sits at a very compelling intersection,” he says. “It feels rooted in history yet completely alive in the present, maximalist yet always disciplined. You see it in the geometric rigor, glamorous materials and theatrical sense of scale. What makes it so relevant today is that it delivers beauty with real purpose—gravitas and glamour in equal measure.”
But Cleghorn is quick to point out that styles take hold of the zeitgeist as a reaction to the moment, not necessarily the style itself. “It isn’t really about the interiors,” he says of midcentury’s resurgence in the 1990s. “It is about emotional grounding at moments when the wider world feels uncertain, and finding cognitive clarity through structure and definition—sometimes through repetition and sometimes symmetry. Midcentury modern has the nostalgia effect, but also it has the structure of the language. Everything feels ordered and neat in its place, with cubist and rectilinear forms and clear contrast in colors and materials. People align to that because it’s really visually clear.”
The looks designers are creating now, though, are more ambiguous; they don’t tout their influences quite so literally as they did in that midcentury moment. For that reason—and perhaps, in part, because our media landscape is much more fractured than it was in the early 2000s thanks to social media—it remains to be seen whether homeowners will embrace art deco as forcefully and persistently as they did midcentury modern. What is clear is that designers are rooting for it. “Art deco offers such a strong, confident backdrop,” says Dolenc. “You can throw pretty much anything at it, and it will stick.”
