Rocky Mountain Hype

British design at the Aspen Institute

They re-created a little piece of England eight thousand feet up in the Rockies this summer. In a comer of Aspen's "foreign field," they raised the Union Jack. (Then a former Boy Scout took it down and raised it again the right way up.) Munching scones and tasting tea were Zandra Rhodes and Bruce Oldfield; Norman Parkinson, paparazzo to Her Majesty; and architects James Stirling and Norman Foster. It was the Aspen Institute's annual International Design Conference, and Britain was its motif.

David Hockney said he wasn't sure why he'd been asked, then went on to extol the artistic possibilities of the office copier. And while the Victoria and Albert Museum's Sir Roy and Lady Strong fought the midday sun in matching pith helmets, social critic Peter York declared, "Britain now is a theme park, a fantasy island of new primitives."

David Puttnam, producer of The Killing Fields, bad-mouthed the new generation of Hollywood moviemakers and promised to sort them out as the new chairman of Columbia Pictures. But Aspen was more about humor than about arts and crafts. Cartoonist Ralph Steadman drew laughs with his speech on Wales, "The Boyo Tapestry." Meanwhile, the best in British design fluttered overhead. After all, who but the Brits could have created a flag so subtle it can fly upside down and still look good.

Hugh Aldersey-Williams