Comments on: The Holly Hobbie Retrenchment

By: rebecca

rebecca — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:06:32 +0000

Just found your blog. I have a blog crush. Awesome essay.

I think it is all a continuum. I have thoughts, but too disorganized and tired. Hopefully they’ll congeal and I can come back and be thoughtful.

I landed here because of your post about the industrial wall lamp. Now I’m afraid I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole.

Best wishes…

By: Lindsay

Lindsay — Fri, 08 May 2009 20:37:16 +0000

Thanks for the comments, and from so far afield! It strikes me that it’s possibly not just economic recession that spawns this back-to-the-farm-that-never-existed pastorale, and this stuffy Victoriana, but economic decline plus end-of-imperial-dreams scenario. England lost all its African colonies throughout the sixties, the German case is obvious, and America, well… Either way it’s understandable that people go back to a fantasy of a safe past, where they lick their wounds and/or pretend it’s not happening, rather than look outward or ahead. Interestingly, the strange blip that was the 60s is, however, being referenced in design more and more lately, in opposition to all the parochial kitsch, but I don’t think it’s prevailing. The experimentalism, wild creativity, internationalism, and futurism of the 60s all seem very far away.

By: John Hopper

John Hopper — Wed, 06 May 2009 10:27:13 +0000

Much of the ‘Little House on the Prairie’ look originated in the 1970s after the oil crisis of 1973. The overnight quadrupling of oil prices triggered a nearly decade long depression (at least in Britain), which fueled the whole vaguely late Victorian childhood phase.

It seems, therefore, hardly suprising that with the present crisis of yet another financial depression, we should have a rehash of the Victoriana cutism of the 1970s.

These are cycles. There is very little anyone can do until the financial climate has settled and people have more confidence. Confidence produced the consumer trends of the 1960s, lack of confidence produced different trends in the 1970s and so on.

If we all stick together and try to be brave, the haunting face of Laura Ashley and all her demonic Victoriana cutisms will recede back into the darkness from whence they came.

By: Eva

Eva — Wed, 06 May 2009 07:04:34 +0000

Great essay! LOL!
The pest of cutism — in a way, we have had that in Germany after WWII as an understandable reaction on a world fallen apart. Here is an example from my own childhood (1950):
http://colourful-research.blogspot.com/2009/04/from-early-childhood.html
The desire of humans to repair their world seems to be elementary. But what we see in the portals which you criticize is fraud. The products traded are not the genuine expression of a longing for a more beautiful world, but cynical exploitation of this urge. And most people who intend to “create”, imitate imitations instead. This is what makes us so uneasy about the inflation of cuteness, I guess.

By: Bree

Bree — Wed, 06 May 2009 02:58:01 +0000

Thinking about it – I am sure you already figured as much. What to do about it – that I don’t know!

Blah blah sorry xob.

By: Bree

Bree — Wed, 06 May 2009 02:54:04 +0000

Your tags!! Man. So funny (or not??). Maybe all this girly kitsch is a reaction to the technological revolution? And economic/ecological meltdown we are finding ourselves in?

Perhaps people are trying to find comfort by reaching far back to the days of our grandparents – with their original sense of DIY and self-sustainablity – and these are the aesthetics and memes that reflect that? I guess if this is the case it would be difficult to find comfort in the 90ies, 80ies, 70ies, 60ies or fifties, (the postwar decades which seem to be those most referenced and remixed in this post-post-modern moment), because these periods either represent consumer gluttony or social revolution – neither which are very appealing at the moment. Not to most people that is.

Anyway – that is my best shot at an explanation! Thanks for the deep thoughts.

xoB.

By: KEEHNAN

KEEHNAN — Wed, 06 May 2009 02:30:53 +0000

Have I told you lately that I love you?