Mnet :: The Boomer Files

NEW YORK, March 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading-edge boomers, those born between 1946 and 1954 -- some 32,217,944 of them -- were against many more things than they were for: the establishment, the Vietnam War and, when it came to style, the utterly boring, materialistic values of their parents, writes Executive Editor Dorothy Kalins in the March 20 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, March 13). In the "Design of the Times," Kalins takes a look at the boomers' interior design philosophy, "Everything we possessed was a political statement, loaded with meaning, an extension of our personalities. But the look of their homes and the fern bars they frequented was far more than decoration; it was an act of defiance: We are not you!" In this latest installment of its yearlong series, "The Boomer Files," Newsweek takes a look back at the interior, graphic, and fashion designs of the past decades, and how they live on today.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060312/NYSU010)

Also included in "The Boomer Files" design package:

* In an exclusive photo shoot for Newsweek, Liv Tyler -- a product of the

baby boom generation -- poses amid three recreated sets of 60s, 70s and

80s design that exemplify the boomer era.

* Senior Writer Cathleen McGuigan reports on today's style and how much of

it is influenced by boomer fashion of the 60s, 70s and 80s. "But as

comfy and familiar and beautiful as much of this fashion is, what's

missing is the impulse that made these designs cool long ago: they were

unexpected, impolite, even subversive. They may still be chic, but

they're no longer radical," writes McGuigan.

* "It wasn't just the Vietnam war, the music and the drugs that fueled the