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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDesign expert identifies Trump's prefered style of interior design as "Dictator Chic"
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/dictator-chic-donald-trumps-over-the-top-style-has-a-name-and-hes-not-going-to-like-it/Dictator style is what journalist and author Peter York dubbed Trumps glittering, gold everywhere, marble-and-frescoes interior design aesthetic in an essay for Politico on Sunday, writing that Trumps residence in Trump Tower is exactly the sort of place in which ruthless dictators around the world like to ensconce themselves.
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In 2007, York published the book Dictator Style: Lifestyles of the Worlds Most Colorful Despots, in which he examined what makes dictators houses so recognizably similar.
I ended up with 16 case studies strongmen from Mexicos Porfirio Díaz to Serbias Slobodan Milosevic and most of them, I concluded, obeyed 10 defining dictator chic rules, he said.
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After his book came out, York was deluged with photos of every dictators residence that was discovered as their empires collapsed. In 2015, though, he came across a set of unlabeled photos that he didnt recognize.
They appeared to show a gigantic apartment in what looked, from the windows, very much like New York. But I know Manhattan and its sophisticated style pretty well, and at first glance, you would think the place didnt belong to an American but to a Russian oligarch, or possibly a Saudi prince with a second home in the United States, he said.
There were overscaled rooms, and obviously incorrect-looking historical detailing and proportions. The home had lots of gilded French furniture and the strange impersonal look of a hotel lobby, with chairs and sofas placed uncomfortably far from one another. There were masses of gold; there were the usual huge chandeliers, branded relics of famous sportsmen like Muhammad Ali, and mushroom-colored marble floors. There was relatively little in the way of paintings, but otherwise, the place reeked of dictator chic, he said.
That residence turned out to be Donald Trumps Trump Tower penthouse, decorated by Henry Conversano, who designed extensivelyand perhaps unsurprisinglyfor casinos. No matter how you looked at it, the main thing this apartment said was, I am tremendously rich and unthinkably powerful. This was the visual language of public, not private, space. It was the language of the Eastern European and Middle Eastern nouveau riche.
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Showing off wealth.
Pseudo-historical designs.
Toxic masculinity.
Nouveau riche.
It's fake. Everything is fake. Trump's style tells us he's a person who puts glamour over substance.
And it's perfectly in line with Vanity Fair's culinary critique of his restaurant: The dishes show none of the skills or sophistication of a real high-scale restaurant, with expensive ingredients desperately slapped together, as if expensive ingredients automatically lead to a tasty dish. An uncouth person's idea what fancy cuisine looks like.
onethatcares
(16,133 posts)Saddon's Palace? Wasn't a big thing made out of Saddam's Palace being ostentatious?
Botany
(70,291 posts)If Ive only got one life, most dictators seem to think, York said, let me live it surrounded by gold. When you have all of your countrys resources at your disposal, why not? Gold furniture, gold wall decorations, columns with gold capitals, gold taps. Bright gold, fake gold, shiny alloys for functional metalwork. Viktor Yanukovych, the recently deposed pro-Russian leader of Ukraine, lived in a positive blizzard of gold, which was revealed to a waiting world when he was ousted in the countrys 2014 revolution.
GWC58
(2,678 posts)Camp David? I don't think so.
JawJaw
(722 posts)Even spending time in the White House is clearly 'slumming it' by his vulgar standards.
Maru Kitteh
(28,303 posts)No masses to be amazed and atwitter when he enters the room.
Without fawning crowds, the man is in hell. What fun is that?
Botany
(70,291 posts)https://aboutcampdavid.blogspot.com/2010/08/aspen-lodge-presidents-cabin-at-camp.html
nice collection of pictures @ the link
WePurrsevere
(24,259 posts)'chic' to describe Trump's home but I'm not a professional designer. I can easily see how Trump's home reeks of a dictator type of OTT style, I just use cold and uber tacky instead of 'chic'.
OTOH that style certainly does accurately reflect Trump's mentality since he seems to really like it that 'style'. He probably envisions himself as a modern King Midas (while forgetting the lesson of that myth).
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)The food Midas touches turns into gold and he starves to death.
Trump is craving validation and admiration, but his behaviour in searching that is exactly what repulses people and denies him that validation and admiration.
WePurrsevere
(24,259 posts)in the versions of the Greek myth I've read Midas didn't die from starvation because of his golden touch. If he hadn't prayed to Dionysus to have it reversed, after turning his child to gold, he probably would have eventually though.
bigbrother05
(5,995 posts)That was the first thing that came to mind about tRump's decorating style.
Beauty Pageant chic would cover their clothing choices, a step up from HS Prom couture.
Granny M
(1,395 posts)Just so fucking tacky. His hair, his clothes, his blabbering bombast, his lack of taste in everything.
alterfurz
(2,467 posts)...can be seen in the yellow-dyed hair and yellow-orange spray tan--he's even trying to turn himself gold!
Ligyron
(7,592 posts)It calls attention but that apartment is a tasteless mass of vulgar kitsch.
A tawdry, inelegant mess - just like its owner.
Mc Mike
(9,107 posts)Javaman
(62,442 posts)Foamfollower
(1,097 posts)It could be a hoot!
Think of it, Trump's penthouse compared to Saddam's palaces.
L. Coyote
(51,129 posts)I was also thinking "Enemy of Mother Earth" style.
Blue Owl
(49,918 posts)n/t
Wounded Bear
(58,440 posts)It's more "regal" looking than the White House.