FashionEast: The Spectre that Haunted Socialism

by Djurdja Bartlett

A richly illustrated, comprehensive study of fashion under socialism, from state-sponsored prototypes to unofficial imitations of Paris fashion. The idea of fashion under socialism conjures up images of babushka headscarves and black market blue jeans. And yet, as Djurdja Bartlett shows in this groundbreaking book, the socialist East had an intimate relationship with fashion. Official antagonism—which cast fashion as frivolous and anti-revolutionary—eventually gave way to grudging acceptance and creeping consumerism. Bartlett outlines three phases in socialist fashion, and illustrates them with abundant images from magazines of the postrevolutionary utopian dress, official state-sanctioned socialist fashion, and samizdat-style everyday fashion. Utopian dress, ranging from the geometric abstraction of the constructivists under Bolshevism in the Soviet Union to the no-frills desexualized uniform of a factory worker in Czechoslovakia, reflected the revolutionary urge for a clean break with the past. The highly centralized socialist fashion system, part of Stalinist industrialization, offered official prototypes of high fashion that were never available in stores—mythical images of smart and luxurious dresses that symbolized the economic progress that socialist regimes dreamed of. Everyday fashion, starting in the 1950s, was an unofficial, do-it-yourself Western fashions obtained through semiclandestine channels or sewn at home. The state tolerated the demand for Western fashion, promising the burgeoning middle class consumer goods in exchange for political loyalty. Bartlett traces the progress of socialist fashion in the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, Poland, and Yugoslavia, drawing on state-sponsored socialist women's magazines, etiquette books, socialist manuals on dress, private archives, and her own interviews with designers, fashion editors, and other key figures. Fashion, she suggests, with all its ephemerality and dynamism, was in perpetual conflict with the socialist regimes' fear of change and need for control. It was, to echo the famous first sentence from the Communist Manifesto , the spectre that haunted socialism until the end.

Genres: Fashion, Art

344 pages, Hardcover

First published October 8, 2010

Reviews

[Maia Olive · Rating 1 out of 5]

Djurdja Bartlett claims in this book that ‘Socialist fashion was always simply a discourse, with little concern about reality.’ This is an incredible statement from a historian who constructs her entire argument based on conjecture, with little concern for reality. Djurdja engages in pseudo-history, completely disregarding any source material which might pose problems for her imagined version of the Soviet Union. This leads to her constant self contradiction between chapters and even between paragraphs, which she seems to either simply not care about, or to be completely unaware of. The blatantly anti-communist ideological framework for her narrative dictates her analysis at every point, leaving the book devoid of any semblance of connection to the past. Rather, Fashioneast: The Spectre that Haunted Socialism reads like the crazed ramblings of a rabid anti-communist who continually refuses to engage with a wealth of primary sources.

[Inna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice book about manipulation of the wish for fashion in Soviet Union and in socialist Eastern Europe. The author claims that after the initial avantgardist and feminist notion that clothes should emphasize people's place in the production and de-emphasize gender differences, which encouraged different treatment of men and women within the economy became too revolutionary for the increasingly socially conservative Stalinit regime, the attitude towards fashion changed. Fashion became important as a cultural sign of gender difference, as encouraged by the government. The thing is that the beautiful feminine fashions presented by elite government fashion houses were there strictly for presentation. It was impossible to use such designs for cheap mass production. Therefore high fashion was perceived as part of regime's self-presentation rather than something supposed to end in the stores, available for purchase. Frustrated customers, who got used to finding only low quality goods in the stores, developed a craving for western fashion goods as well as for western consuming culture. While this happened in both Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Eastern European countries were more open to western and western-style consumer goods and as such were also perceived as a source of higher quality fashion goods. The newly growing middle classes found solutions in private tailoring, smuggling, and employment of connections - all somewhat illegal. Essentially the author claims that frustrated consumers in these countries ended up glorifying Western consuming patterns and therefore the West as such. This glorification was an essential part of middle class culture. The main issue was that after the initial impulse in the 20s to revolutionize the view on gender and thus erase the concept of fashion the governments adopted conservative middle class notions of consuming, but were unable to follow these through by mass production of relevant goods. Therefore the customers were in constant state of frustration which eventually developed into political attitudes.

[SnezhArt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Для русских читателей, интересующихся модой - must read.

[Erin Bronner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really helped inform my thesis!