It’s Thursday, so let’s all take a ten-minute break to imagine ourselves strolling through the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, France. Everyone hold your parasols high to celebrate the dawning of a new century!
The hectically colorized photos of the event, a world’s fair featuring scads of Art Nouveau, come via Laughing Squid; pop over to Vintage Everything for many, many more images. It looks like they originated with the Brooklyn Museum, whose first curator made the trip to the exhibition and brought a photographer. This Pinterest board has even more pics and artifacts.
There’s also video, in which you can watch turn-of-the-century Parisians taking great delight in what appears to be a moving sidewalk. It’s like watching toddlers at an airport. Enjoy and be glad we’re no longer required to dress in fifteen different layers of cloth to leave the house: