Generally, I’m quiet fond of most 1970s design, even the stuff that looks especially dated and hilarious to us now. Maybe especially that stuff. But there is a subset of 1970s design that always kind of creeps me out. I think most of what I like about ’70s graphic design is that it can (not always, but the potential is there) become a sort of zanier take on Bauhaus/Modernist design, with earthtone stripes and clean typography and a certain strange futurist feeling. But every now and then, designers in the ’70s would give in to these weird urges to make things absurdly fussy and ornate, and look to this weird idealized Victorian era for inspiration. And the combination of those things just ends up, well, weird. And a little creepy.
This 1971 brochure for the Winnebago Chieftain is a great example of what I mean; Winnebago design from the 1970s was usually felt more like that ’70s futurist sort of feeling, but this brochure leans hard into that other weird ’70s influence, that strangely saccharine and somehow unsettling Victorian influence that just makes me think of strange lonely old houses and creepy porcelain dolls that rotate their heads slowly to look at you, clearly possessed, and a certain sort of musty, heavy, overly sweet lingering smell.
It weirds me out. I mean, just look at this stuff:
What a I supposed to do with these images? Does this make me want an RV? I mean, only in the context that it could help me get away from whatever this is. That picture of the bed in the upper left feels like a photo the cops would take to show where the hostage was held for all of those months. Then there’s Madame Ghosty in the other upper corner, and that bedroom set out in that field with Primrosetta Hathawayfield taking her mourning dove out of its floating, gilded cage just creeps me out. And that carmel-mustard colored shag rug looks longer than the grass it’s flopped on.
Why were we doing this? Why couldn’t ’70s design keep looking boldly forward? Why were we looking back so hard, just with more orange and burnt umber, inscribing fussy lines on cheap particleboard cabinet veneer, faking marble on the walls and getting way too into making tea?
And that typography up top. Ugh. I have this thing against really fussy script typography, it feels cloying and pretentious and is kind of a visual mess. I especially feel this way when script fonts are used for all-caps text, like this:
Ugh, awful! It’s almost illegible, too. Loopy script types like this can have their place, but they were never meant to be all-caps and used for strings of letters and numbers like this. Who likes this?
Oof, look at this incredible display of textures and earthtones! Sometimes I forget that a lot of the ’70s was like being in a world made of guacamole and chili and creamed corn. All the fabrics seemed so thick and textured, that I remember. For years I think I thought plaid was as much a tactile experience as a visual one. All of these fabrics feel like everything I touched in the Lutheran church basement youth rooms that hosted the Boy Scout troops I was in.
And, again, up top, we can’t escape this weird backwards-looking fetish. This time it feels more antebellum South than Victorian, though.
The whole pre-Civil War south thing keeps cropping up, too. In this spread about propane tanks and water level gauges, they really needed to sneak in a bit of the Confederate battle flag?
And then sometime they just went full plantation:
The hell, Winnebago? Why? Why do we need Col.Sanders and his favorite daughter, Herbsann Spices Sanders, promenading in front of this old plantation house to their massive, parked RV? I get that we look at this sort of scene through different eyes today, just seeing a miserable time of oppression, but even back then, why is this a way to sell RVs? I just don’t get the connection here?
Of course, what could be better to show than a bare RV mattress? Give that some stains, chuck it by a ravine in the woods, and stick a tattered stack of Oui and Swank and Hustler magazines and you have a really powerful scene of woodland discovery for so many people of my generation.
Also, please note the shag toilet seat cover and all those patterned, brocaded fabrics that made every seat look like it had a skin condition.
I like how the fabric patterns are shown in this cutaway, because it makes those chairs look like weird aliens. Especially that one near the back, above the couch.
These cutaways are pretty fantastic, though:
I can’t stay mad at a brochure with such fantastic cutaways! There’s even one free of the absurd ornate frames! Look!
Now that’s a satisfying diagram! These things were so huge, and with their corrugated sides, really built like drivable sheds. I also love their profile/silhouette, which wasn’t just non-aerodynamic, it had a genuine, undisguised contempt for the wind, shoving it aside with real malice as it lumbered down the highway, chugging a gallon of gas every other mile.
Man, the ’70s were weird.
Top graphic and story images: Winnebago
You try to sell me some aspirational glitz, you better know “complement” from “compliment.” Suddenly I see it’s all a sham!
The front end of that thing is atrocious, but in a “I can’t stop looking at it” kind of way. Grossly mesmerizing.
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Well said.
Hot take;
People that buy RVs have no sense.
Common,cultural,style,economic,environmental, all elude.
There, I said it. Sure to ingratiate me with Mercedes.
It’s so true, isn’t it?
My only counter is that buying an old fiberglass travel trailer is better for the environment than buying a new RV! Hmmm, and some RVs had great style! Otherwise, it’s hard to argue with much of that logic. 🙂
There must be certain situations where renting one, or a really good, almost free deal used makes sense. I could see it as temporary housing while building your mountain cabin too far away from hotels, for one.
Why is the authorized dealer for that antebellum Winnebago in London, England? Were the English buying these things?
There is a somewhat smaller winnebago probably of 80s vintage that lives up the road for om me, so at least one of us did.
Mr. Wham, “Last Christmas” is one of my favorite songs, the vid is unforgettable. And let’s not forget “Wake Me Up Before You Go-go.” Thank you for your contribution to my happiness.
So much of the RV market, especially big motorhomes, are primarily bought by retirees. So the marketing department has to use the current styles that are popular with the older demographic.
In the 60s and 70s, that meant the peculiar stylized “Old-Timey” vibe of that era. It was freaking everywhere. Just like 50’s nostalgia was so damn pervasive in the 80s where styles otherwise tilted toward avant-garde futurism, Bauhaus/brutalist design, or gritty punk.
It’s why today, as you go up the price scale in big class A motorhomes, the interiors now look like a combination of cruise ship, casino, and tourist-resort hotel design. Because that’s what the late Silent Generation and early Boomers are familiar and comfortable with in their travels leading up to their retirement years.
The next wave is probably going to be greige and “modern farmhouse” HGTV slop because that’s what’s been foisted off onto aging Gen-X homeowners as fashion. It’s already entrenched in mid-price RVs.
As older Gen-X who just freaking can’t stand mass-market HGTV “style” it’s annoying when I go looking at motorhomes on sale, used or new. I just want practical and comfortable, not overwrought or trendy. A few manufactures do, fortunately, offer “basic” interiors like that. As soon as I see some of the gaudy or trendy stuff, I nope right out.
As an older GenX get what you are saying. For me any Rv I would get would be a plain waterproof box that I can set a cot and a sleeping bag in.
As yet another old Gen-X, I’m going full-on mid-century modern. If I’m ever tricked/blackmail/otherwise forced to obtain an RV, I want a design aesthetic that resurrects Syd Mead.
Fuck Chip and Joanna Gaines and their shiplap hellscapes!
I joke with my Wife that Chip & Joanna’s real house is actually ultra modern…lots of chrome and glass.
Shiplap: This generation’s ZBrick.
That’s what’s a little odd to me, though, motorhome styles do lag residential interior design trends by about 15-20 years, except maybe in the 1950s, when modernism was mainstream across the board (even then, the version in campers was still more of a 1930s or 40s interpretion) – BUT, the folks buying a Winnebago in the 1970s would have been born in the 1910s and 1920s predominantly, so those Victorian fashions would have already been outdated when they were growing up and forming their tastes.
Only thing I can figure is that there was a pretty strong “Gay ’90s” 1890s nostalgia fad during the 1950s that a lot of younger and middle aged adults got swept up in, so maybe this was hanging onto that for buyers who didn’t move with the new fads that came in in the 1960s and 70s.
Sort of like how millennials went crazy for the 1980s nostalgia, boomers loved the 1950s, and Gen Z seems to be idealizing the 1990s right now. If you tried to sell a 50 or 60something year old Millennial a new camper with 1980s influences, that might be the same thing, 80s nostalgia is sort of fading out as the big, current thing, but not everyone past a certain age is going to move along to the next thing
That sounds about right, people tend to have some nostalgia for a time they missed out on. And in terms of interior design, I think most people didn’t have the latest and greatest, so they actually DID live with the furniture of those 1890s ghosts. In my case, in terms of interior design, I’ve always loved my grandparents’ mid-century/Bauhaus furniture, everything about it feels like home and I want to get lots of it if/when I can afford to.
My grandfather had an original Eames Lounge Chair and I desire one just as much as I desire many similarly-priced cars nowadays.
A lot of times what happens is that a segment of a younger generation gets influenced strongly by an earlier one and carries that popular style forward for longer. It gets muddy. When a particular style is popular across more than one generation, it tends to be a “sure bet” in marketing terms — so it hangs on and stays pervasive even when it seems like it ought to be winding down.
Sometimes it’s driven purely by the familiarity factor if an older generation’s tastes are reliable moneymakers, and younger ones just accept the trend because it’s what’s available. This has fundamentally driven Boomer fashion over Gen-X fashion even as Gen-X passed into the middle-age “money demographic”. There are simply more boomers, so it makes marketing sense to cater more to their tastes even when styles might normally begin moving toward a younger generation’s tastes if both population sizes were equal.
Gen-X is painfully acclimated to being passed and driven over by both older and younger generations with larger numbers and wealth, nothing new about that.
And they all struggle to understand why we’re so fiercely independent and angry, it was never a choice, it’s always about survival when you’re outnumbered and out financed…
Also “Gone With The Wind,” still the biggest movie ever when adjusted for inflation, came out in 1939. I imagine that’s the biggest driver of this weird antebellum imagery.
As reflected in the popularity movies of such as “Meet Me in Saint Louis,” and “The Music Man,” or of Disneyland’s Main Street U.S.A.
“In the 60s and 70s, that meant the peculiar stylized “Old-Timey” vibe of that era. “
If you look at some estate sales these days you see a lot of fake-colonial decor crap like spinning wheels, probably acquired in the 60s/70s.
Oh god, the dreaded non-functional “Spinning Wheel-Shaped Object”. My wife is a skilled handspinner; those things drive her and other fiber artists nuts!
I hold a deep contempt for fake, decorative versions of real machines. I can make a small exception for LEGO versions, but the thought of someone going out of their way to buy, let alone manufacture, a non-functional replica of an outdated piece of technology is perplexing. Especially because they tend to be made nothing at all like the real thing, with none of the detail or quality that make it beautiful.
I can understand getting a broken antique from someone’s yard sale, there’s some historical/emotional value there, but a watering can with no holes, microphone with no wires or gramophone with no moving parts is just stupid.
Same with the decorative fake muskets people buy to hang on the walls, its not like real antiques or, even, just functional modern replicas, are hard to find
Yes! There’s so much craftsmanship in the flintlock mechanism and barrel forging of a musket, but most decorative replicas I see are die-cast with still-visible mold lines, painted a “gunmetal metallic” color and fitted with these terrible little screws. Bonus points for having moving parts cast right into the side of the breech with very low fidelity, and for not even having the barrel hollow at all. Fine for a costume prop, but I’d keep it in the bottom of the closet for the rest of the year.
this reminds me of one time I really offended my Mum when I was a kid, we were watching some random old TV show rerun full of ugly, ugly 1970’s fashion & design aesthetics just like this, and I asked her:
“Mum, did it not used to matter how people dressed or what they looked like?”
she was probably in the middle of watching it and re-living her glory days or something lol
“Mum, did it not used to matter how people dressed or what they looked like?
Does it now?
All I can think of now is those 1970s Time-Life hardcover cookbooks of “food from around the world” and the nauseating color grading of the food photography. The recipes weren’t much better, although I expect many were actually pretty authentic, esp the early-70’s German potato pancake recipe I tried. I think the pancakes were 1.5lbs each from the butter. I remember telling my British college hall-mate that my mom had taken a “cookery” class in the UK in 1978. She made a confused expression and blurted, “my God… Why?!?”
Food photography is really interesting to me. What’s especially fun is that a lot of food photos from big glossy cookbooks and coffee table books in the 80s are some of the best ever imo.
You should check out the Gallery of Regrettable Food site. Almost a catalog of these types of cookbooks and recipes. Warning, it’s a bit of a time suck.
Oh my god, I had forgotten about lileks dot com. And when I read this it popped right back into my head. And now there is much catching up to do.
Went there to verify it was still operating before posting and almost got sucked back in…
So did they have shower spaghetti back then too? Ha ha
Point of correction – Col. Sanders’ daughter was called Mildred. I only know this because we have a local chain of bootleg fried chicken places with a fascinating history.
https://missmillies.co.uk/our-story/
Maybe Herbsann Spices were her middle names?
That only hints what they might be. Nobody outside a very select few actually know her secret 11 middle names.
(Pretty sure MOAR SALT!! is of them though.)
But we do love the Great Gatsby 70s advertising design? That’s really a fine line to walk..
These pictures smell musty to me.
I was born to old people. My father would view this decor as elegant. He liked those dark heavily paneled restaurants of that era so this approach makes sense since he’d be the target market for these.
I do think that in a dark, nice old restaurant this sort of style does look elegant, but when it’s cheap paneling shoved into a cramped RV I’m surprised anyone fell for it.
I actually really like that classic steakhouse look – dark paneling, red leather booths, dim lighting, wish more places did that instead of fake barnwood walls, initiation driftwood vinyl floors, and everything overlit like a Disney sitcom
Why do I feel as though you’re just some red, checkered tablecloths away from a classic Pizza Hut? I mean, the booths were red vinyl and the walls were brick with those trapezoidal windows, but still…
Glad to see I’m not the only one who’s perturbed by the use of script fonts in all caps!
And a comment on all the confederate garbage. Sadly even today, if you’re a business like Winnebago, that’s headquartered in a “northern” state (Iowa), you have to include subtle (or even obvious) nods to this “southern culture” to sell your product to those in the southern US.
At my previous job, we had a client that was headquartered in a northern state. With that state name in their corporate identity. But they have a separate subsidiary with “Southern” in the name to sell in the southern US. Otherwise there’s a subset of people who won’t buy anything from “yankees”.
Cause bros are still mad that they can’t own humans. Or something.
There are some weird vibes in the south. When I first moved to Tennessee from Michigan couldn’t understand the whole North / South animosity. I finally asked someone what the big deal was all about. She said that Yankees look down on Southern folk and think we are better than them. We think they are stupid and don’t have shoes. I said where did you get that idea – I haven’t really though about what life was like in TN at all, just as I never wonder about life in South Dakota or Maine. That didn’t help. I guess it was better to be looked down on than not even thought about
Then I moved to Alabama and people from Tennessee were also considered to be Yankees…
Its, much the same as you move inland from the California coast. Sacramento in particular is to me afflicted with delusions of grandeur. I notice it most whenever I attended a live arts performance. It matters not how good or bad the performance is, it ALWAYS gets a standing ovation.
That’s not an inland thing. It’s a “the past 15 years” thing. Somehow a standing o stopped being an indicator of something special and started being “the thing you do” like clapping.
My recollections are from the early 90’s so that’s at least 35 years.
It was a gradual shift from “this happens more frequently than it used to” to a nearly ubiquitous unless the audience hated the show thing. The tipping point coming in the early aughts. I am not joking when I say it’s literally my job to know this (and other audience behavior-related patterns).
We Yankees DO generally look down on southerners. Bless their hearts.
Do you condescendingly promise to pray for them? That’s my favorite part.
I am as Godless as they come, so no, though I consider myself rather an “Old Testament” Atheist. But yeah, I love that part too. I just can’t help thinking the devout (or fake devout as the case may be), no matter their choice of invisible magic being, are more than a little bit soft in the head. I am extremely equal-opportunity in that way.
When I used to install accounting systems in hardware stores I would occasionally be prayed over and/or asked if I had a “personal relationship with Jay-sus” when I was in stores down South or in the Upper Midwest – I found that amusing. But I do try to be polite about it on the outside when I am getting paid to do so.
asked if I had a “personal relationship with Jay-sus”
Ugh. I used to work with a Baptist who carried a pocket bible at all times. In the bible were a few blank pages for the names and contact info of those “saved”. The MLM recruiter vibe really creeped me out.
I grew up in Kansas and Texas, but have lived on the west coast for decades. When I visit friends & family in the rural midwest, I’m stunned by how insecure everyone seems. And they are absolutely convinced that everyone on the coasts looks down on them and makes them the butt of jokes. I don’t remember it being like that growing up. I mean, the stereotype existed… but no one really took it that seriously.
I’m convinced that this is a result of messaging by the right wing media to help sell the idea that coastal “libs” are the enemy.
What might be either more annoying or less annoying to such folks is that I bet most “Yankees” or “coastal liberals” don’t actually bother to spend much time thinking about the Midwest or South at all.
What passes for “news” on some media outlets might indeed feed into such attitudes among some folks in the Midwest and South.
Speaking as someone who grew up in the Midwest then went to California for college, I have no intention of ever living in the Midwest ever again. For me, it’s a fine place to be from. Just not interested in being back there except for visits with the relations.
That insecurity existed 25 years ago in Tennessee.
I’m in North Carolina for work at the moment and last night ate at a restaurant bar. A woman in her 60’s that was sitting next to me asked where I was visiting from. I said, Portland, Oregon and the first thing she said – “look at me – not barefoot or pregnant”.
We had a nice conversation after the weird start.
And her teeth? All there? Did she live in a trailer park or have a car on cinderblocks on the lawn?
Kidding aside I visited the Great Smokies area a couple of years ago and found it quite pleasant. I did however make sure to go in the fall when the weather was at its best. My greatest disappointment was an appalling lack of BBQ joints. I had assumed they’d be everywhere, like drive through gun and liquor stores in Texas but there were no BBQ joints to be found at all! I asked at the visitor center and was told oh, we just do that at home.
I had to get my BBQ fix in Knoxville on the way to the airport.
The visitor center mislead you. I used to live near Knoxville and there were BBQ joints all over. The best are little shacks on the side of the road with some picnic tables.
A quick Google map search shows 20 in the greater Gatlinburg / Pigeon Forge area.
Not so many in Townsend where I was staying. There was one place and it was perpetually closed. Most of my travels took me into the park so Townsend was pretty much the only convenient option.
I did have a few hours in Gatlinburg and was looking forward to getting BBQ there but that didn’t work out. The places I saw there were not isolated mom and pop roadside stands like I wanted but overpriced tourist traps. No thanks, I can get Sysco BBQ at home.
Not much of anything in Townsend, TN but it is a beautiful area. There used to be a good motorcycle rental place but it looks like it has closed. (GSM Motorcycle Rental)
In Gatlinburg’s defense – everything there is a tourist trap. I used to avoid it like the plague.
I will not be returning either (to the town of Gatlinburg that is). There were however many hikes in the area around Gatlinburg that looked interesting. Townsend was also very nice despite the BBQ deficit.
If they’re in the rural Midwest the only possible way some rando from the coast will ever *see* the them is from 30,000 feet so yeah, they are literally gonna get looked down on.
https://images-stag.jazelc.com/uploads/theautopian-m2en/cs_winnechief_2.jpg
Nothing says “Elegance” like pea soup green polyester sateen pinch pleat curtains covering the window right above the surface mounted stainless steel sink of a Winnebago
It’s extremely challenging for me to imagine a time when this style of design was fresh and new and desirable. I can look at 80s or 90s stuff and kind of get it, but 70’s? Nope.
Always a birdcage… What also struck me is the kitchen photo with the antiques roadshow collection of antique copper and brass pots which were used for cooking over an open fireplace. I will say though that 1970’s was also a period of “peak antique interest” so that may account for some of the Victorian styles seen here.
Modern media tries to tell us that everything in the 80s was neon and pastels but the vast majority of my memories of the 80s and into the 90s was the left over 70s browns, avocado greens, and maize yellows shown in these brochure photos.
Only the rich redid everything in the 80s pastels. Seemingly everybody in the US redid everything in the 70s puke colors.
I read that as “malaise yellows” and I’m not sorry about it. Although, technically, I think it was called “Harvest Gold”.
Whatever they called it we had the matching oven and stove tops and chairs in our kitchen.
I scrolled the article to see the photos and was struck by the sight of the mattress. Was that meant to be enticing? I’m glad Torch had the same reaction.
In case you didn’t think the pic with Col. Sanders in front of the plantation house was bad enough, on the next page, next to the bare mattress, they’ve got a shot of the RV parked by what appear to be slave quarters. That was… a choice.
Herbsann Spices Sanders. You can’t see me but I’m clapping.
The woman standing between two beds with a mirror in one hand and a birdcage (?) in the other could absolutely have been one of those 70’s prog album covers designed by Hipgnosis.
You could have told me that was Stevie Nicks and it was an album cover and I wouldn’t give it a second thought.
Wait a second, the 1971 Chieftain didn’t have a bedroom? You had to resort to a second living room with a pull out bed for Colonel Sanders??
Here’s the really fun part, Jason: look at the “full plantation” pic. See the authorized dealer stamp?
WILSONS MOTOR CARAVAN CENTRE, ACRE LANE, BRIXTON, LONDON, SW2
How many confederate plantations are there in southern England??
Fun fact: while the southern part of the US is stereotyped as simple, backward, less-than-bright, etc., in England the north receives that sort of treatment.
I am very curious to know how many people were brave and/or stupid enough to import a Chieftan to the UK. I suppose it’s doable; Iain Tyrell piloted a Peterbilt down some B-roads in the countryside, after all, but a Winnebago within the limits of London? That would have been incredible.
…anyone still have fake crystal handle faucets in their house? I do. And that super thin wood paneling in the basement. And one stairway in particular with shag carpet.
I own a house built in 1965 and it has that crap wood paneling in the dining room. Sadly, a previous owner painted it white.
It really was all the rage back then. My folks redid several rooms in our house in the mid-70’s when it was still trendy yet inexpensive, and they all got a different shade of it. Living/dining room, family room, primary bedroom. The different wood tones gave each room its own character, I suppose. I don’t hold it against them; it was the ’70s after all.
My house, built in 1993, has those fake crystal handled faucets. They were manufactured by Delta and every single one of them still works flawlessly after 33 years. They are not my style and one day I am going to remodel these bathrooms, but those faucets are tanks. I can’t imagine even the most expensive faucet available today would last 30+ years.
I think the one I still have in the bathroom is finally giving up the ghost. Shower faucet still going strong though.
My childhood home in the 70s:
Fake crystal handle faucets
Linen-textured Masonite wall paneling in the living room
Kitchen with avocado green appliances, tile and sink
stained-glass swag lights
brown shag carpet, except where there was Mexican tile
one bathroom where everything was pink, another where everything was avocado green
A small part of me feels nostalgia for this kitsch, and I do have some 70s pieces in my house today, but total immersion in this malaise stew probably goes a long way toward explaining why Generation X turned out the way we did.
The house where I grew up was built in the late ’60s or very early ’70s. It had the fake cut crystal faucet knobs in the bathrooms, wood paneling in the hallway and kitchen, avocado green linoleum with some weird dark lattice pattern, and matching avocado green fixtures (including a wall-mounted towel rack!) in one bathroom. I have vague memories of an appliance, possibly a dishwasher, with wood veneer decals. I don’t remember the original carpeting, but I know from pictures that it was shag. The kitchen cabinets had that decorative scrollwork cutout thing going on, similar to what’s shown in the brochure.
My parents had the kitchen, hallway, and one bathroom redone in the early ’90s, just in time for the ‘country kitsch’ trend. The avocado linoleum was overlaid with some beige and mauve monstrosity with a ribbon pattern, all of the paneling was removed (exposing a bowed wall in the hallway), and the avocado-drenched bathroom was redone in almond.
Is this really early Cottagecore or Tradwife? I keep saying that the 70s were just awful. Did the battle flag just predate the Dukes of Hazard fad a 1/2 decade earlier?
I recall a whole Southern-idolizing style subculture in the 70s. It was… something.
Actually, since these things are generational, some of what’s getting popularized in a… particular polarizing aspect of current style and culture traces back with uncomfortable clarity. And it’s being passed to the younger generations begat by the ones that participated in the 70s version of the milieu.
There’s a reason why modern Germany banned symbols and certain other aspects revolving around the National Socialist Party. Not everything of “the good old days” should be perpetrated forward.
Back in the 80s I remember a history teacher comparing the Appalachians (Were we lived) north of the Mason-Dixon line and the Appalachians south of it and in the southern part people knew what relatives were in what battle and all of that from the Civil War in a way that Northerners just did not understand. You are so right!