‘Retro’ is a 1970s term made current by French writers commenting upon the postmodernist fashion for artists, designers and film-makers to revive and recycle past styles, often very recent ones. A shop called Retro duly opened on the Tottenham Court Road in 1975, and by 1979 the backlash had started with feminist art critic Lucy Lippard coining the term ‘retrochic’ to denote ‘a reactionary wolf in countercultural clothing’. Much retro involves the uncritical and gratuitous appropriation of traditions and styles from other ethnic groups under the often spurious name of art.
