Stylin' Boomers

We received a release about Newsweek's Boomer Files Style edition, on news stands today. That was a great thing about hippiedom: you could identify members of the pack by what they wore and what their houses looked like. If I saw bellbottoms, granny glasses, Batik, earth shoes, bead curtains, peace signs, or a tastefully placed bong on premises, I knew this person was 'one of us.' Not sure I would've ever called it 'design' or even 'style'-- I thought it more a matter of budget and altered states of consciousness than any kind of style statement. Our visual sense has been legitimized over the decades--witness the interest in 60's poster art and the kind of retro styles you see in teen catalogs like Urban Outfitters these days.

You can see the whole package at Newsweek or zero in on design, fashion, or graphic design.

Here's what the release has to say:

"New York-Leading-edge boomers, those born between 1946 and 1954-some 32,217,944 of them-were against many more things than they were for: the establishment, the Vietnam War and, when it came to style, the utterly boring, materialistic values of their parents, writes Executive Editor Dorothy Kalins in the March 20 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, March 13). In the "Design of the Times," Kalins takes a look at the boomers' interior design philosophy, "Everything we possessed was a political statement, loaded with meaning, an extension of our personalities. But the look of their homes and the fern bars they frequented was far more than decoration; it was an act of defiance: We are not you!" In this latest installment of its yearlong series, "The Boomer Files," Newsweek takes a look back at the interior, graphic, and fashion designs of the past decades, and how they live on today."