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Art Deco took its name, short for arts décoratifs, from the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925,^[3] though the diverse styles that characterised it had already appeared in Paris and Brussels before World War I.

Arts décoratifs was first used in France in 1858 in the Bulletin de la Société française de photographie.^[6] In 1868, the Le Figaro newspaper used the term objets d’art décoratifs for objects for stage scenery created for the Théâtre de l’Opéra.^[7][8][9] In 1875, furniture designers, textile, jewellers, glass-workers, and other craftsmen were officially given the status of artists by the French government. In response, the École royale gratuite de dessin (Royal Free School of Design), founded in 1766 under King Louis XVI to train artists and artisans in crafts relating to the fine arts, was renamed the École nationale des arts décoratifs(National School of Decorative Arts). It took its present name, ENSAD (École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs), in 1927.

At the 1925 Exposition, architect Le Corbusier wrote a series of articles about the exhibition for his magazine L’Esprit Nouveau, under the title “1925 EXPO. ARTS. DÉCO.”, which were combined into a book, L’art décoratif d’aujourd’hui (Decorative Art Today). The book was a spirited attack on the excesses of the colourful, lavish objects at the Exposition, and on the idea that practical objects such as furniture should not have any decoration at all; his conclusion was that “Modern decoration has no decoration”.^[10]

The actual term art déco did not appear in print until 1966, in the title of the first modern exhibition on the subject, held by the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, Les Années 25 : Art déco, Bauhaus, Stijl, Esprit nouveau, which covered the variety of major styles in the 1920s and 1930s.^[11] The term was then used in a 1966 newspaper article by Hillary Gelson in The Times(London, 12 November), describing the different styles at the exhibit.^[12]

Art Deco gained currency as a broadly applied stylistic label in 1968 when historian Bevis Hillier published the first major academic book on it, Art Deco of the 20s and 30s.^[2] He noted that the term was already being used by art dealers, and cites The Times (2 November 1966) and an essay named Les Arts Déco in Ellemagazine (November 1967) as examples.^[13] In 1971, he organized an exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which he details in his book The World of Art Deco