“What Influenced My Personal Style?”
The iconic silhouette of the Baby Champ 5110 led it to colloquially be known as the “waterfall” or “rainbow” radio. The repeated lines are in reference to the Art Deco movement, an art movement that achieved popularity in 1925 and lived on until the 1940s.
*Art Deco: an art movement characterized by sharp, geometric forms and new materials symbolic of modernity and progress.At the time after the First World War, the Art Deco movement symbolized optimism and hope for a brighter future, and furnishings and architecture modelled in this style served as the pinnacle of prosperity that dejected citizens strove for (Wolfe 2022). It’s possible that this radio took design inspiration more specifically from the Streamline Moderne Movement, which is a subset of the Art Deco movement formed in response to the Great Depression, and was most popular during the 1940s-1950s. During this time, as the economy plummeted, styles began shifting once more. Opulence was being rejected in favour of function and efficiency as the machine age approached, and horizontality and curved lines were emphasized for a more aerodynamic aesthetic (Torres 2024). This can explain how this tabletop radio, despite its ornate details, has a rather straightforward and sleek silhouette.
Its refined aesthetic was undeniably fashionable for its time, solidifying its status as an iconic and highly desirable piece of the era. As Michael Windover argues in Art Deco: A mode of Mobility, “Purchasing a Deco radio set would likely suggest in the mind of the buyer a sense of seeming knowledgeable about contemporary fashions and new technologies” (Windover 2012, 219). The trendy, design-forward approach to this radio signifies a step towards a more style-conscious consumer habits, driving purchasing decisions on the Baby Champ 5110 Radio.
Click below to read more about how the Baby Champ 5110’s design style was leveraged in its advertisements!