Boomers were style shapers

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

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.

 

Also included in "The Boomer Files" design package: * In an exclusive photo shoot for Newsweek, Liv Tyler -- a product of the baby boom generation -- poses amid three recreated sets of 60s, 70s and 80s design that exemplify the boomer era. * Senior Writer Cathleen McGuigan reports on today's style and how much of it is influenced by boomer fashion of the 60s, 70s and 80s.

 "But as comfy and familiar and beautiful as much of this fashion is, what's missing is the impulse that made these designs cool long ago: they were unexpected, impolite, even subversive. They may still be chic, but they're no longer radical," writes McGuigan.

* "It wasn't just the Vietnam war, the music and the drugs that fueled the boomer design revolution. Raised in Ward and June Cleaver's house -- with that cheesy laminated furniture, the tacky repros of birds or flowers framed with wide mats on the walls and that god awful shag carpet on the floor -- they had a cause for revolt right there at home," writes Senior Writer Peter Plagens who takes a look at the impact of boomers on graphic design -- from album covers to posters to signage along the interstate highway system