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This Week 100 Years Ago: Headlines from 05 10, 2025

✧ Looking Back a Century

Welcome to another edition of This Week 100 Years Ago, where we hop into the time-machine and ask what the world was talking about on the second week of May 1925. Spoiler: Paris was positively glowing.

Paris Glitters with Art-Deco Brilliance

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On Sunday, 10 May 1925, the boulevards along the Seine were humming. Paris had thrown open the gilded gates of the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes only twelve days earlier, and by this weekend the crowds were record-breaking. Fashion editors jostled with industrial designers, American tourists clutched Baedeker guides, and every cafe terrace within earshot of the Grand Palais was sold out of café crème before noon.

Why It Mattered Then

  • The fair introduced the term Art Déco (short for Arts Décoratifs) to the world.
  • More than 15,000 exhibitors from 20 countries flaunted modernism—streamlined typography, geometric motifs, sunrise-bright color palettes.
  • Women designers, from Eileen Gray to the Maharani of Baroda’s Indian Pavilion team, were given coveted floor space—still a rarity in 1925.

A Fast-Forward to 2025

Today our 3-D printed furniture and AR interior demos trace their lineage to the show’s credo: good design belongs in everyday life. Yet the 2025 aesthetic has looped back—note how this year’s smart-watch faces borrow the same sunburst and chevron patterns debuted in Paris a century ago.

Trivia: In May 1925 a ticket cost 30 francs—about €18 in 2025 money. Try getting into a blockbuster design fair for that!

Then vs. Now – Rapid-Fire Highlights

  • Mobility: Visitors arrived by coal-fired steam train; last week I glided in on a hydrogen-powered sleeper pod from Berlin.
  • Media: Reviews hit the streets via hand-set type hours later; in 2025 the hashtag #ArtDeco100 trended worldwide before dawn thanks to digitized archives.
  • Energy: The pavilions dazzled with the latest neon tubes; this morning, the site is lit by solar tiles modeled after the 1925 zig-zag motifs.

Stay tuned—next week we’ll see what else 1925 is about to unveil. Until then, keep your eyes open for the past hiding in plain 2025 sight.