Thoughts on Global Village Coffeehouse
I find the Global Village Coffeehouse aesthetic to be very comforting. It's a little before my time, but it takes a while for stuff to rebrand, so I could see the leftover coffee stains of this aesthetic well after its boom in the 90s.
My parents also came of age in the 80s, which shaped their aesthetic sensibilities. The 80s started out as a very brown decade, according to this post here--a leftover from the 70s. If we follow the 20-year trend cycle, that would mean that brown came back in in the 90s. It's also not a stretch to assume the ubiquity of brown in the 90s was a reaction to the brighter colors of the 80s as well as the "computer aided design boom."
My house in the 2010s was laced with the marsala-mustard colors and aged-paper art we associate with this aesthetic. The walls of my bedroom were tan. The floors--hardwood--were also tan. Bumpy throw pillows with bubbles of beige and crimson sat on our wine-colored couch. Everything had a map on it. "The Cosmopolitan" and "Time to Shop" by Karen Dupre hung to the left of my bed.
While these works don't read as GVC to me, there are some common elements. Muted colors, presence of wildlife, the "...flowing curvy figures."
