Take me home, country road…

Aaaah the 1980s… loud hair, shoulder pads, Dynasty, cocktails, ghettoblasters and glossy interior design magazines (and no world wide web). It was Maggie Thatcher’s Britain and Ronald Reagan’s USA – and a certain frisson that bonded the two. 

Boom… 

I remember the boom in home and interior magazines with designers and architects lifted onto pedestals as superstars, supported by the likes of Blueprint and The World of Interiors. House-proud owners and home improvers couldn’t get enough of magazines like House and Garden (renamed HG in the USA in 1988), Better Homes and Garden, and Country Living.

But this wasn’t about the make-do-and-mend chic we know and love today… no this was about decorating with lots of disposable income, it was about aspiration. So it was fascinating to find myself taken back by this cutting from one of the chief purveyors of aspiration – Country Homes and Interiors.

… and Bust

You’ll notice (if you read the piece) that I allude to spare money being tight –  (a philosophy that didn’t chime with the affluent,  yuppie, “loadsofmoney” culture prevailing back then especially in the magazines.) And it’s also fascinating because the things I do today, the vintage upcycling, the paint effects, the courses, and so on, shows I haven’t really detoured from since the 80s, but the zeitgeist is totally different today.

Anyway, it does provide a snapshot – literally and metaphorically – of where I was in April 1987! And how about the headline: “Bringing colour and light to homes is my profession”? Not a bad bit of time travelling and I love the posed portrait with David, my husband at the top of this post… 

… and of course the pic of my three little boys (for ‘Tom’ read ‘Felix’!) Hope you like this little ‘time capsule’ too.

Yours, Annie