28-04-2025
Ooh La La! Art Deco Exhibition Ends Today
Exactly one hundred years ago, the most fashionable designers from around the world gathered in Paris to debut an entirely new kind of modern design. The Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes launched the style we now call art deco, and the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles has been celebrating all weekend at one of L.A.'s most magnificent secret spaces, the Oviatt penthouse.
The private residence of clothing magnate James Oviatt sits 12 stories above his magnificent men's store on Olive Street downtown. The boutique closed in 1967 and sat empty for decades. His widow lived alone in the penthouse until she died eight years later. The space was restored in the 1980s and is occasionally open for special events. Today is World Art Deco Day, and until 9pm, guests and club members will be mingling amidst icons of decorative arts from the 1920s at 'Art Deco Tous Les Jours'—an original exhibit of stunning period artifacts including textiles, furniture, fashion, fine art, and a newly recovered painting long lost to the Oviatt.
'They can come see the exhibit and enjoy our centennial cocktail menu curated from period books by our vintage cocktail expert,' the society's executive director Margot Gerber tells Los Angeles. 'We'll have French music and curator talks in the gallery explaining the significance of the original expo and how it impacted Los Angeles.' Los Angeles City Hall, the Wiltern, and the Eastern Columbia building were all influenced by the style. The 1925 Expo sent shockwaves around the design world, inventing a whole new design vocabulary that found its way to fashion, architecture and everyday household objects. Suddenly, everything from vacuum cleaners to clocks went modern. A zeppelin-shaped cocktail shaker will be on view near original fabrics and souvenirs from the Expo, including some very expensive playing cards that were intended to be sold in Oviatt's clothing store. They're displayed near a carved bar that Oviatt had sent back from the original Parisian expo. The Art Deco Society is cooking up months of fun to celebrate. More outings to vintage venues like the Queen Mary, Tam o'Shanter and Yamashiro for their popular Cocktails in Historic Places series are on the roster. L.A.'s legendary Bullocks Wilshire department store, a temple to commerce and art deco, opens June 7 for a lecture on jewelry history of the 1920s and a perfumier will address the group at the Saban theater in Beverly Hills on June 29 to discuss Jazz Age fragrances used in everything from perfume to chocolate.
What will become of L.A.'s mini expo tonight when the doors close at 9? 'When we wrap we'll just bulldoze it into the Seine river,' Gerber jokes. 'That's probably what they did in 1925.'
