Ultra Swank - Retro Adventures

Interview • daydreaming • inspiration • kitsch • event

Where are all the Good People?

It was contemporary artist Jack Johnson who asked the question “Where’d all the good people go? I’ve been changing channels, I don’t see them on the TV shows. Where’d all the good people go?” I was watching Mad Men the other night and seeing all the antics of the characters it got me thinking about the people of the late sixties and how the show...

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From Solsoulvideo comes ‘Larmes Dans La Pluie’, a nostalgic, melodic and dramatic voyage into the night, depicting melancholic Parisian inner city life set to the bittersweet melodies of swing, jazz, chanson and modal lounge tracks. The clips are taken from the 1967 Italian/French/American movie Woman Times Seven starring Shirley MacLaine, Michael Caine and Peter Sellers. What do you daydream about today? ...

Video

The definitive Populuxe film on 1950s automotive, industrial, interior and architectural design. A tribute to the American designer presented by Chevrolet. The fist half of this film is a collage of 1950’s American design from appliances to architecture, the second half follows the design process of a new Chevrolet automobile from the early sketches to a full sized model and finally the finish product. A...

Visions of a ’57 Chevy Bel Air
Written by Patricia Greenwood in Inspiration

Visions of a ’57 Chevy Bel Air

I love cars. Let me rephrase that. I love vintage cars manufactured in America from 1955 to 1975. I love the streamlined, the finned, the hard tops, the convertibles, the muscle types, the bold colored, but mostly, I love that fabulous automobile icon, the ’57 Chevy Bel Air. My admiration for this vehicle began many years ago, when I was quite small. What started out...

Video

It’s Friday and the weekend is around the corner. So what could be better than taking a weekend trip to a vintage flavored past-time London with its vibrant and bustling city scenes? Join Ultra Swank as we take in the sights of 1960s London – grabbing coffee at one of the Moka Bars, checking in at a prestigious Hotel, trying our luck at the casino and to finish it...

Modernism Week – Coast to Coast Cool

A mecca for all things mid-century modern, Palm Springs once again showcases its world-famous modern design, architecture, and culture with the 11-day festival know as Modernism Week. Modernism was a popular design aesthetic originating in the 1950s and ’60s, which typified clean, simple lines with elegant informality. It came to define desert modernism as a sought-after architectural genre. Modernism Week has become one of the...

Never Built Los Angeles – What It Could Have Looked Like

Never Built: Los Angeles is an exhibition opening spring 2013 at Los Angeles’s A+D Architecture and Design Museum. It features a collection of spectacular projects that only saw the drawing board. In words, drawings, models, videos and other media the show looks at visionary works that had the greatest potential to reshape the city. The exhibition will include buildings from legends like Frank Lloyd Wright,...

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