Vanity & Vice

Vanity & Vice: American Art Deco at the Kirkland Museum invites visitors to indulge in the glitz and glamour of the dynamic designs that came out of the rebellious years of 1920-1933. The exhibition recreates a Prohibition-era boudoir and speakeasy, decorated with the kinds of Art Deco objects that filled these rooms at the time and came to represent a time of freedom and great societal change.

With the success of the women's suffrage movement and passage of the nineteenth amendment in 1920, American women enjoyed more independence inside and outside the home. Styling hair into a chic bob, wearing rouge on the lips and cheeks, and publicly consuming cocktails and tobacco all became cultural signifiers of what it meant to be a modern woman. American designers and manufacturers responded in kind, creating high-demand items such as fashionable perfume atomizers, vanity sets, and drinking and smoking accessories in the latest styles.

American Art Deco design is often exemplified by geometric motifs or stylized and simplified forms with a new emphasis on color. The almost 200 objects on display are all American made, designed between 1920 and 1933, and are part of the Kirkland's permanent collection. The period clothing and jewelry are on generous loan from History Colorado.