booksism, soviet style

'Fashionable Sack' Svijet 1958

I have slowed down somewhat on my book buying, where possible.  However sometimes the images and ideas are so evocative, it's just a pleasure to know the inspirational resource I'm bringing home!

Fashion East, Djurdja Bartlett, MIT press 2010

I've always had a soft spot for  socialist idealism in art, design and fashion.  I don't know, I guess it's the totalitarian vision in me that can't get enough of a gestalt idea.  This new book looking at fashion in communist europe is beautifully illustrated, and gives a great alternate picture of fashion and advertising in the east.

The premise is that the Soviet revolution called for a complete cultural overhaul, that also included stepping away from western ideals of fashion.  I've long collected designs of the early constructivist movement, that looked at ways of making clothing an integral part of the worker's life and philosophy.

Varvara Stepanova, 1923

However this book continues the story, looking at the actuality of what people wore and how fashion developed between the extremes of east/west philosophy.  Early  examples, promoted through new Soviet fashion magazines, attempted to combined industrial manufacture with the heritage of ethnic Russian  decorative crafts.

magazine proposals for fashion in 1929

 However, the reality of industrial manufacture meant many of these presentations never made it into production and reality!  In 1935, the Dom modelei 'House of Prototypes' in Moscow was established, as was a related magazine, where they claimed to be in process of bringing thousands of potential  prototypes to the Soviet woman.  Photographs, instead of old-fashioned illustration, showed the potential for urban wear:

model wearing outfit by S. Topleninov in Dom Modelei

However the Dom still promoted what we would consider fashion akin to that of the west, and luxuries seeped into the advertisements that came to be aimed solely at soviet elites.

Evening dresses, 1938

Elsa Schiaparelli was asked to collaborate with the Dom Modelei and wrote,"These clothes bewildered me, for I was of the opinion that the clothes of working people should be simple and practical; but far from this I witnessed an orgy of chiffon, pleats, and furbelows." Elsa did design a collection for the Soviets, but apparently it never went into production as the clothing was considered too simple and the large pockets featured on the coats were criticized as too attractive to the pickpockets on public transport!

Inevitably, Soviet fashions developed alongside those of the west, sometimes simplified and at others exaggerated, but always within a bureaucratic structure.

dress designs, All-Union House of Prototypes, 1958

American model Suzy Parker posing in clothing by Croatian designer Zuzi Jelinek, 1959

Eventually state-sanctioned ideals of Soviet dress moved to an undercurrent of do-it-yourself western-inspired fashions shared through smuggled and home-made patterns.   Since consumerism was unavailable to most people,  Bartlett makes an interesting association between the careful crafting of one's own clothing as a time-based disruption of the 'socialist master narrative'!

When shorts became highly fashionable in the sixties,  but unavailable in Yugoslav stores, the magazine Svijet printed a pattern with the headline, "You cannot fight the shorts, you can only join in!"

you cannot fight the shorts!

and voila, back at my Brownie dress!

I've only surveyed this book, as it is a scholarly study of the construction of Soviet fashion industry and its relationship with advertising, but I love seeing the development from the early designs and ideals. I was evidently too lazy to scan the images rather than photograph them, but maybe with the next installment when I get around to it...that's right...Fascist fashion!!