my careless contagion

If you're anything like me, you're lounging around your hallways and living spaces right now in an outfit just like this. It's hot out, but you're even hotter. Way to look, man! You're living, laughing, and loving stylishly, my friend. Come along for the ride. This may be the last retro post, so enjoy while you can.  My all-time favorite styles are art deco and art nouveau. I believe Alphonse Mucha was brilliant and will always be remembered as emblematic of the art nouveau style, though he didn't want to be associated with art nouveau. The above is art deco. I simply love it. The grace. The modernity. The boldness. The shininess. The sensuality. For something stationary and two-dimensional, it has motion and depth. It's absolutely enrapturing for an amateur art nerd like me.  It's nice to think of times when life was supposedly simpler. Not easier, mind you. But, most likely, they were simpler. Like the age during which I grew up. Even the 90s were see...

If you harbored any questions about my sanity, you are now likely alarmed. Because, once again, I'm choosing to write about retro/vintage stuff. By now you should be used to it, so tag along and have some fun, if you like. Or hang out on the brain-rot that is TikTok while the rest of us have fun. Those are your options.  I have no idea what the above advertisement says, but it makes me want that boat of a Mercedes. What a good-looking vehicle. Clearly, this is not from our era. A lot of what drives my retro obsession is nostalgia. (And I could keep writing these forever, but, hopefully, this is the last one.) If I was lucky enough to be one of the 1% of people who owned a car in that era, I sure hope it would have been a Mercedes like that. This is the traditional role of advertising. It makes you aspire to something. Now, not so much. It's more of a social re-education thing going on. But, at its core, advertising is propaganda. True then and now, regardless of what they'r...