The name “Art Deco” comes from the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris.
The exhibition ran from April to October 1925 on a large site between Les Invalides and the Grand Palais, with pavilions, interiors, furniture, jewelry, metalwork, glass, and architecture. It showcased the French decorative arts while also presenting designs from countries including Britain, Italy, Japan, Poland, and the Soviet Union.
The style was not usually called “Art Deco” by its original practitioners. The shortened French phrase arts décoratifs became the source of the later label, which gained wider currency decades afterward. A common mix-up is assuming the exhibition invented the style: Art Deco design had already developed in France before 1925, but the Paris event gave it an international showcase and its enduring name.
The exhibition also included modernist experiments, notably Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret’s Pavilion of the Esprit Nouveau, showing that the event contained competing ideas about modern design.