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Russian fashion is diverse and reflects contemporary fashion norms as well as the historical evolution of clothing across the Russian Federation. Russian fashion is thought to be influenced by the state's socialist ideology, the various cultures within Russia, and the cultures of surrounding regions.
The New Economic Policy's authorization of private business allowed Western fashion to enter the Soviet Union. [1] However, Bolshevik ideology opposed Western fashion consumption as an intrinsically capitalist practice. Western fashion emphasized both economic status and gender differences in a system that sought to deemphasize both. [2]
In the early 1920s, Party-sanctioned magazines like Rabotnitsa ("The Working Woman") and Krest’yanka ("The Peasant Woman") offered discourse on fashion. Covers displayed women in plain work clothes, yet the magazines often contained advertisements for private companies selling stylish attire. [3] By 1927, however, the magazines’ message was consistent: women should be judged on their capability for work, not their appearance. Fashion, as a beauty aid, was therefore considered bourgeois and detrimental to socialist society. [4]
In its place, the state commissioned projects to engineer a new Soviet type of dress, which drew on traditional clothing, constructivist forms, and technological facilities. [2] Constructivists like Varvara Stepanova and Alexander Rodchenko agreed that fashion driven by the market was inherently harmful. [5] They employed the simple geometry of cubism to design clothing that was functional, easily mass-produced, and sometimes unisex. [6] Due to a lack of adequate material and machinery, however, this prozodezhda, or "production clothing", did not appeal to the proletariat audience for which it was intended. [7] Designs were only available to the most privileged members of the intelligentsia, who ultimately preferred Western fashion to the highly experimental prozodezhda. [8]
During the Stalin era, anti-fashion sentiments dissipated. Party-sanctioned magazines now promoted fashion and beauty as necessary parts of a Soviet woman's life. Rabotnitsa included fashion advice in almost every issue and regularly reported on new fashion houses opening across the Soviet Union. [9] Krest’yanka even organized traveling shows to bring fashion to the countryside. [10] The promoted aesthetics were highly varied, ranging from urban polish to ornate decoration. [11] [12]
This new interest in fashion was connected to Joseph Stalin’s assertion that "life has become better and more cheerful". [13] Persistent images of plain women and quaint peasants were thought to propagate the capitalist view that socialism engenders poverty. [9] Fashionable and beautiful clothes were a signal of culture and quality of life equal (or superior) to that under capitalism. Stakhanovites, as foremost examples of successful workers, were expected to adhere to particularly high standards of appearance. They were often photographed wearing fine clothing even as they went to the factory. [13]
In reality, the touted fashions were beyond most citizens’ means. Soviet industry was unable to produce fashionable clothing in significant quantity, and what did exist was not available for general sale. [14] During World War II, the Soviet fashion industry went on hiatus. [15] If the average Soviet citizen desired a particularly stylish item of clothing, they were usually forced to commission a private tailor. [16] Day-to-day fashion was often self-produced, and magazines consistently advised women to take a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to their appearance. [17]
The Khrushchev Thaw brought a greater representation of Western fashion to domestic media. Journalists were sent abroad to report on the latest international fashion trends. [18] However, state-owned fashion institutions and magazines moderated these trends for Soviet audiences. Fashion "crazes" were rejected in favor of classic, long-running styles. [19] In addition, moderation and modesty were stressed. [20] Coco Chanel’s signature style, for example, was particularly admired as a symbol of timelessness and simple sophistication. [21] An article in the New York Times from 1959 slammed Soviet fashions as unremarkable, "clumsy copies" of outdated Western forms. [22] Availability of these styles, however, was on the rise. Shops like the newly reopened GUM department store now carried the new fashions, albeit at high prices. [23]
Where previous generations reminisced about the ‘Great Patriotic War’ and Joseph Stalin's 'red terror', the 50s and 60s, gave rise to the ‘Sputnik generation’ and the notorious stilyagi (Russian : стиляги) who championed a new, youthful wave in popular culture. [24] In the Mid-1950s, the Soviet government enacted an anti-stilyagi campaign through "public censure, humiliation and shame" for being influenced by and promoting excessively Western fashion norms. [24]
In previous generations, fashion had not been a focal point for Soviet ideologists and was often viewed as an "anomaly in socialism" by these circles. [25] However, at the turn of the Second World War, during the Khrushchev Thaw, authorities became aware of fashion as a ‘natural force’ in society; particularly as more women became interested in dressing well. [26] Therefore, fashion became an avenue through which the Soviet government would, primarily, seek to rebuild a war-torn nation and revitalise the efforts of promoting pro-Party sentiment. [27] The symbol of the post-War "New Soviet People" would thus emerge, wherein trendy youths would help construct the modernist image of a new communist utopia [27] [28] and subsequently help fight counterculture movements like the stilyagi from the pop-cultural front.
The institution of fashion in the Khrushchev Era was characterised by a system of state-financed Parallel Organisations. [29] There are indications that Khrushchev, while still opposing the excessive nature of art and architecture in Western culture, was lenient in his judgement towards fashion and the clothing industry. [30] In 1964, Khrushchev oversaw the Fourth Session of the Supreme Council of the USSR that promoted measures towards The Communist Party Program in the field of Raising the People’s Prosperity. [30] He declared:
Working people want to acquire clothes and shoes that have an up-to-date style and beautiful color and that correspond to the season and to fashion. This is a good thing.
But the Third Party Program to which he referred (adopted at the Twenty-Second Party Congress in 1961), and which promised the arrival of full communism in the 1980s, made no mention of the notion of fashion. As for clothing consumption, it was only meant to satisfy the "rational needs of reasonable people". [31]
From the early 1960s to the late 1980s, the USSR would develop the largest system of fashion design and marketing in the Socialist World; with 30 regional fashion houses employing over 2802 designers. [25]
The state's new approach towards fashion was carefully calculated. The promotion of exorbitant fashion that occurred in the Stalin era, and the contrast to actual availability, had led to public resentment. In the Khrushchev era, the state-owned clothing industry was still unable to produce mass amounts of fashionable clothing. [32] However, simplified fashions, rejection of excess, and high prices gave the industry a measure of control over consumer demand. [23] By the early 1960s, the middle class' standards of appearance had risen such that Moscow street fashion was nearly indistinguishable from that in a Western city. [33]
At the same time, counterculture fashion movements grew among elite youths. The stilyagi , or "style hunters", originally based their look on media portrayals of Western (especially American) fashions. Men wore items such as Hawaiian shirts, sunglasses, narrow slacks, and pointed shoes, while female stilyagi wore miniskirts and maintained a childlike demeanor. These styles were labeled as "excessive", and Komsomol groups would sometimes raid stilyagi hideouts and cut off their hair and pant legs. [34]
To some historians, the Khrushchev era, thus, represented an ideological shift largely promoted by international contacts through commodity exchange; [35] signifying the new current of Western values, at least, in relations to cultural expression. However, these views are controversial with some scholars taking aim at the growth of collective surveillance from the Soviet government and the emergence of ‘volunteer policing’ that increased the "prevalence of social control at the daily level under Khrushchev". [24]
By the end of the 1960s, Soviet fashion institutions, like the centralized fashion bureau ODMO (All-Union House of Prototypes), were embracing increasingly novel Western trends. [36] At the same time, there was still a need to establish distinctively Soviet fashions. "Space fashion," for example, fit directly into state ideology by glorifying a triumph of Soviet science. [37]
Reality, however, differed from ODMO's designs. Soviet industry could not keep up with the demand for fashionable goods, and supply in USSR shops was worse than in other socialist countries. [38] The public was also dissatisfied with the available items. For example, Soviet women so disliked promoted designs involving Russian ethnic prints that the style ultimately became more popular in the West than in the Soviet Union itself. [39]
The middle class increasingly idealized Western fashion, as it was visible but not easily obtainable. [40] American-made blue jeans were an especially desirable item. [41] Secondhand stores were one source of Western fashion, as visitors from the West could import goods and sell them for high profits. The retail chain Beriozka also sold some Western clothing, but only to the privileged few who could pay in hard currency or foreign exchange certificates. Foreign exchange certificates and Western clothing were also available on the black market. [42]
Under perestroika, varied fashion became acceptable. In 1987, Gorbachev allowed a Russian edition of Burda Fashion magazine to be produced and distributed. [43] The next year, Zhurnal mod began a new run as the first "proper" fashion magazine in the Soviet Union. In content, it was virtually indistinguishable from a Western fashion magazine, although ODMO provided all the styles. [44]
When the nineteenth party conference met in the summer of 1989, they passed a resolution to increase the production of consumer goods. Fashionable clothes were mentioned specifically in the proceedings. [45] Despite advocates for fashion at the highest level of bureaucracy, real changes in production failed to take place. The Ministry of Light Industries set quotas for the creation of new products, but textile factories recycled older patterns and products instead. [46]
Meanwhile, relaxation of censorship under glasnost made the middle class even more aware of their Western counterparts. They felt that they deserved fashionable clothing as a status symbol, but still could not easily obtain it. [47]
One of the brightest representatives of this era is a Russian designer Vyacheslav (Slava) Zaitsev.
In this era, Russian media in the field of fashion and culture were born, for example, the Magazine "Krestyanka" and others.
The collapse of the USSR in 1991 resulted in the flooding of the consumer market with imported American and European designer clothing, especially blue jeans. [48] Neon colors such as hot pink, orange, turquoise or electric blue, acid wash denim, rhinestone or sequin dresses, black leather jackets, and geometric printed clothing featuring triangles, zigzags, lozenges and lightning bolts were particularly popular in Yeltsin's Russia during the early to mid 1990s. [49] Skater fashion was particularly popular among teenagers in many former Warsaw Pact countries. [50]
Russian fashion during the 2000s and 2010s generally followed Western trends, with slim fitting grey or navy blue suits being particularly popular among professional men. At the same time, however, some traditional accessories such as the ushanka or astrakhan cap made a comeback as part of a backlash against the West, due to many Russians rediscovering their national pride. [51]
Modern fashion could not do without the support of Russian fashion media: Fashion Collection, FashionTV Russia, InStyle Russia, Vogue Russia, Melon Rich, Moda.ru, La Boheme Magazine and many others.
Djurdja Bartlett highlights the difference between the production and consumption of fashion in the USSR (including satellite states such as Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland and Yugoslavia) and argued that production through Soviet-style five year plans slowed the development of fashion initially, when comparing these instances with the capitalist West. [52] However, she makes clear that this changed during the post-war period when counter-culture movements began idolising "self-expression by means of clothing". [53]
Olga Gurova discussed for the post-War and Khrushchev period how rather than producing new clothes, citizens would re-use old and worn-out clothes from the post-War period "when eagerness to acquire new fashion prevailed". [54] Larissa Zakharova addressed this fact too and stated this individualistic element of ‘DIY-ing’ clothes was symbolic of Western fashion influence. Zakharova also argued that aside from the individual production of clothes, the fashion industry operated as an arm of state apparatus influenced by Soviet policy and ideology. Both of these modes existing in conjunction demonstrate the "various contradictions" of the Thaw era. [55] In her paper ‘Dior in Moscow’, Zakharova further addresses how the Khrushchev administration tried to bolster the fashion culture in the Soviet Union by providing luxurious items inspired by the haute-couture fashion houses of the West but, at the same time, using this as precedence to secure a tighter grip over Soviet fashion houses. [56]
Historians Mila Oiva, Anna Ivanova and Elena Huber placed women at the forefront of shifting fashion trends. [57] How socialist fashion moved from abject functionality (funktsional’nost) to a desire for stylish items that coincided with the Western ‘haute-couture’ fashion houses largely has to do with the reimagination of the Soviet working woman as a woman that dresses "well and elegantly". [57]
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), at some points known as the Russian Communist Party, All-Union Communist Party and Bolshevik Party, and sometimes referred to as the Soviet Communist Party (SCP), was the founding and ruling political party of the Soviet Union. The CPSU was the sole governing party of the Soviet Union until 1990 when the Congress of People's Deputies modified Article 6 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution, which had previously granted the CPSU a monopoly over the political system. The party's main ideology was Marxism–Leninism. The party was outlawed under Russian President Boris Yeltsin's decree on 6 November 1991, citing the 1991 Soviet coup attempt as a reason.
Fashion is a term used interchangeably to describe the creation of clothing, footwear, accessories, cosmetics, and jewellery of different cultural aesthetics and their mix and match into outfits that depict distinctive ways of dressing as signifiers of social status, self-expression, and group belonging. As a multifaceted term, fashion describes an industry, styles, aesthetics, and trends.
Jeans are a type of trousers made from denim or dungaree cloth. Often the term "jeans" refers to a particular style of trousers, called "blue jeans", with the addition of copper pocket rivets added by Jacob W. Davis in 1871 and patented by Davis and Levi Strauss on May 20, 1873. Prior to the patent, the term "blue jeans" had been long in use for various garments, constructed from blue-colored denim.
Socialist realism is the official cultural doctrine of the Soviet Union that mandated an idealized representation of life under socialism in literature and the visual arts. The doctrine was first proclaimed by the First Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934 as approved method for Soviet cultural production in all media. In the aftermath of World War II, socialist realism was adopted by the communist states that were politically aligned with the Soviet Union. The primary official objective of socialist realism was "to depict reality in its revolutionary development" although no formal guidelines concerning style or subject matter were provided.
The Sino-Soviet split was the gradual worsening of relations between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) during the Cold War. This was primarily caused by doctrinal divergences that arose from their different interpretations and practical applications of Marxism–Leninism, as influenced by their respective geopolitics during the Cold War of 1947–1991. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Sino-Soviet debates about the interpretation of orthodox Marxism became specific disputes about the Soviet Union's policies of national de-Stalinization and international peaceful coexistence with the Western Bloc, which Chinese leader Mao Zedong decried as revisionism. Against that ideological background, China took a belligerent stance towards the Western world, and publicly rejected the Soviet Union's policy of peaceful coexistence between the Western Bloc and Eastern Bloc. In addition, Beijing resented the Soviet Union's growing ties with India due to factors such as the Sino-Indian border dispute, and Moscow feared that Mao was too nonchalant about the horrors of nuclear warfare.
The "Era of Stagnation" is a term coined by Mikhail Gorbachev in order to describe the negative way in which he viewed the economic, political, and social policies of the Soviet Union that began during the rule of Leonid Brezhnev (1964–1982) and continued under Yuri Andropov (1982–1984) and Konstantin Chernenko (1984–1985). It is sometimes called the "Brezhnevian Stagnation" in English.
Consumer goods in the Soviet Union were usually produced by a two-category industry. Group A was "heavy industry", which included all goods that serve as an input required for the production of some other, final good. Group B was "consumer goods", final goods used for consumption, which included food, clothing and shoes, housing, and such heavy-industry products as appliances and fuels that are used by individual consumers. From the early days of the Stalin era, Group A received top priority in economic planning and allocation so as to industrialize the Soviet Union from its previous agricultural economy.
Communal apartments are apartments in which several unrelated persons or families live in isolated living rooms and share common areas such a kitchen, shower, and toilet. When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917 after the October Revolution, to cope with the housing shortage, they nationalised luxurious apartment blocks from rich people to make them available to the proletariat.
Goulash Communism, also known as refrigerator communism, Kádárism or the Hungarian Thaw, is the variety of state socialism in the Hungarian People's Republic following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. During János Kádár's period of leadership, the Hungarian People's Republic implemented policies with the goal to create a high standard of living for the people of Hungary coupled with economic reforms. These reforms fostered a sense of well-being and relative cultural freedom in Hungary, giving it the reputation of being "the happiest barracks" of the Eastern Bloc during the 1960s to the 1970s. With elements of regulated market economics as well as an improved human rights record, it represented a quiet reform and deviation from the Stalinist principles applied to Hungary in the previous decade.
Maternity clothing is worn by women as an adaptation to changes in body size during pregnancy. The evolution of maternity clothing began during the Middle Ages, and became fashionable as women became more selective about style and comfort in the types of maternity clothing they wore. Fashions were constantly changing over time, such as the high-waisted Empire silhouette style maternity dress that was fashionable at the turn of the 19th century, and the "wrapper" style dress of the Victorian era that a woman could simply wrap around herself and button up.
Elizabeth Hawes was an American clothing designer, outspoken critic of the fashion industry, and champion of ready to wear and people's right to have the clothes they desired, rather than the clothes dictated to be fashionable, an idea encapsulated in her book Fashion Is Spinach, published in 1938. She was among the first American apparel designers to establish their reputations outside of Paris haute couture. In addition to her work in the fashion industry as a sketcher, copyist, stylist, and journalist, and designer, she was an author, union organizer, champion of gender equality, and political activist.
Stilyagi were members of a youth counterculture from the late 1940s until the early 1960s in the Soviet Union. A stilyaga was primarily distinguished by snappy clothing—preferably foreign-label, acquired from fartsovshchiks —that contrasted with the communist realities of the time, and a fascination with zagranitsa, modern Western music and fashions corresponding to those of the Beat Generation. English writings on Soviet culture variously translated the derogatory term as "dandies", "fashionistas", "beatniks", "hipsters", or "zoot suiters".
Stilyagi is a 2008 Russian romantic jukebox musical film directed by Valery Todorovsky and starring Anton Shagin and Oksana Akinshina. Set in mid-1950s Moscow, the film depicts the Soviet stilyagi subculture, along with their struggle for self-expression within the prevailing reality of the Soviet repression.
Throughout their existence East Germany and the Soviet Union maintained close diplomatic relations. The Soviet Union was the chief economic and political sponsor of East Germany.
Rock music played a role in subverting the political order of the Soviet Union and its satellites. The attraction of the unique form of music served to undermine Soviet authority by humanizing the West, helped alienate a generation from the political system, and sparked a youth revolution. This contribution was achieved not only through the use of words or images, but through the structure of the music itself. Furthermore, the music was spread as part of a broad public diplomacy effort, commercial ventures, and through the efforts of the populace in the Eastern Bloc.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was founded on 6 July 1923. It had three names during its existence: People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (1923–1946), Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1946–1991) and Ministry of External Relations (1991). It was one of the most important government offices in the Soviet Union. The Ministry was led by the Minister of Foreign Affairs prior to 1991, and a Minister of External Relations in 1991. Every leader of the Ministry was nominated by the Chairman of the Council of Ministers and confirmed by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, and was a member of the Council of Ministers.
The Khrushchev Thaw is the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s when repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were relaxed due to Nikita Khrushchev's policies of de-Stalinization and peaceful coexistence with other nations. The term was coined after Ilya Ehrenburg's 1954 novel The Thaw ("Оттепель"), sensational for its time.
Western culture influenced Soviet life and culture in many ways. From the 1950s until the 1980s this influence was manifested in a widespread fascination with Western manufactured goods, films, music, fashion and ideas. This fascination was condemned by the Soviet authorities and was described as "idol worshiping the West" and similar phrases.
The Third Program of the CPSU was a party platform of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, adopted at its 22nd Congress on 31 October 1961. The main goal of the program was to create a plan for the construction of communism.
Alla Levashova was a Soviet fashion designer.
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