What to say about... Art Deco at the V&A

Short of importing the Chrysler building from Manhattan, it's difficult to see how the Victoria and Albert could have improved on its exhibition Art Deco 1910-1939. All right, you're only quoting Philip Hensher from the Mail on Sunday, but you agree with every word he says.

"It's a bold attempt to tell the story of the most popular style in the history of design," you explain, breathlessly (Independent on Sunday). It is, simply, "a show it would be ridiculous to miss" (Guardian).

And if asked what exactly it is all about, quote Brian Sewell from the London Evening Standard, who reckoned that "to define art deco is as impossible as pinning a dozen live butterflies to a cork specimen board".

Just give the broad brushstrokes: the term art deco is derived from the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs, which was held in Paris in 1925, but it wasn't coined for another 40 years to describe "the first truly global democratic movement in art and design, [which] influenced everything from jewellery to grand hotels" recognisable in "buildings and bric-a-brac from Tokyo to Mexico City" (Independent on Sunday). Art deco, you explain loftily "was perhaps the last universal idiom in design and architecture before we entered the postmodern age" (Sunday Telegraph).

Don't have your friends thinking art deco is only to be found in its most famous locations: New York, Paris and Miami. Sure, New York has the Chrysler and Empire State buildings, but there are excellent examples in London, too. You can even do art deco supermarket shopping, as the Independent on Sunday pointed out, at Tesco on the A40 - formerly the "much-loved but derelict Hoover factory building".

However, you sigh, the art deco era was not all fabulous mirrors and curves. "This exhibition perpetuates the myth that the period was one long whirl of cocktails and jazz, everybody roaring and swinging together," you say (Independent on Sunday). "The reality was very different: poverty and political instability were rife. Deco, like the lifestyle it mirrored, was an empty sham."

Political realities dispensed with, drag your friends down to South Kensington to drool over that Egyptian sarcophagus vanity case complete with "gold, platinum, carved bone, sapphires, emeralds, diamonds, onyxes and enamel... with folding mirror, lipstick holder and cigarette compartment" (New Statesman). Then lament the fact you can't buy yourself one in the museum shop.