This Week 100 Years Ago: Headlines from 05 17, 2025

Stepping Back to Mid-May 1925

Every Friday we crack open the time-capsule and ask: What was the world talking about exactly a century ago? On 17 May 1925 the buzz was flowing straight from the banks of the Seine, where Paris had just unveiled a vision of the future—one so stylish it would lend its very name to an entire design movement.

Paris Dazzles With the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes

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What happened?
Although the fair had officially opened on 28 April, it was the third week of May when international visitors truly began pouring through the monumental gates. More than fifteen million people would eventually stroll the mile-long stretch of pavilions shimmering along the Seine, but on this very weekend in 1925 journalists were already hailing it as “the style show that will change how the world lives.”

Why it mattered:
• The exposition coined the term “Art Deco,” showcasing streamlined geometry, tropical hardwood veneers, chrome, and bold color blocks that felt radically modern next to the soft curves of fading Art Nouveau.
• Electric lighting—still something of a novelty—bathed night-time crowds in a futuristic glow, while neon signs blinked brand names over the skyline for the first time.
• Women designers such as Eileen Gray and Charlotte Perriand were quietly rewriting the rules of interior space, even if the press of the day didn’t always credit them.

Tiny slice-of-life detail:
Vendors sold paper “programmes lumineuses”—fold-out maps printed with phosphorescent ink so tourists could navigate the grounds after dark. It was the 1925 equivalent of today’s augmented-reality expo app.

A 2025 perspective:
Streaming the latest VR product launch from our sofas feels a world apart from queuing in ankle-length coats beside the Petit Palais, but the motivation is identical: a hunger for a glimpse of tomorrow. Just as Art Deco blurred art, tech and commerce, 2025’s design world dissolves boundaries between physical and digital; our OLED-paper magazines or AI-generated mood boards echo the same optimism captured in those gilded exhibition halls.

What Else Was Brewing That Week?

While the Paris exposition dominated headlines, telegram wires also crackled with reports of John T. Scopes’s upcoming trial in Tennessee and the British polar vessel Quest struggling through Antarctic pack-ice on Ernest Shackleton’s final, posthumous expedition. But that is a story for another Friday…

Come back next week for another flash-bulb from the past. Until then, keep one eye on the future—and one on the rear-view mirror of history.