Великобритания, Лондон.
Лондонский колледж Моды, Университет Искусств.
Старший научный сотрудник

Сразу же после большевистской революции 1917 года мода стала пониматься как презираемая, пустая деятельность, к моде относились с недоверием как к продукту западного, буржуазного образа жизни, культуры потребления. В 1920-е возникает конструктивистская утопия, порожденная стремлением к тотальному изменению платья как такового, и гендерного порядка в обществе в целом. Однако в 1930-е мода возвращается — как часть сталинского мифа. Мода не была частью успешной индустрии, в ней не действовали рыночные механизмы, полем ее деятельности стало чистое искусство, где она разыгрывалась по законам утопического и мифологического сознания. В это время измение эстетики костюма соответствовало изменениям художественных канонов. К утопической фазе можно отнести: конструктивизм, кубофутуризм и русский ар деко. К фазе мифологической — социалистический реализм

 

UK, London.
London College of Fashion, University of the Arts.
Senior Research Fellow

From Artistic Utopia to Mythica l Reality : Fashion under Socialism

Fashion became a despised activity immediately after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, and continued to be ideologically distrusted, since it originated in the West and was part of the rejected bourgeois cultural and commercial heritage. The 1920s constructivist utopia was informed by an urge for a total change in dress and for a total change of the previous gender order. In contrast, fashion was embedded within the Stalinist myth and its general return to history from the 1930s on. As a conventional field of fashion with its market-led activities was abandoned, the concepts of utopia and myth were played out in the field of art. Thus changing aesthetics of dress corresponded to the contemporary artistic expressions. In the utopian phase these included: constructivism, Cubo-Futurism and Russian Art Deco, while Socialist Realism was preferred aesthetics in dress during the mythical period

 

Following the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, Russia went through a series of very different socialist practices, from the initial Leninist period, through the New Economic Policy (NEP) and its reintroduction of semi-capitalism in the 1920s1, to Stalinism which economically and politically centralized the country and isolated it from the West, and to a new political turn introduced by Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s, which attempted to abandon Stalinist isolationism and modernize the Soviet Union. Fashion was ideologically suspected throughout these various political and social changes. In the early 1920s Russia, the Con structivists fiercely opposed fashion. Politically closed to the Bolsheviks, they embodied Bolshevik anxieties concerning dress as a carrier of status and gender differences. However, there were both genuine efforts and politically motivated attempts to re-introduce fashion in socialism even during that period, as well as afterwards. However, fashion could be acknowledged only when perceived as art. During the historical period of 72 years, dress bowed to different aesthetics, from the Constructivist utopian abstractionism, to the Cubo-Futurist sartorial explorations, to a Russian version of the Art Deco style, and, finally, to the paradigms of Socialist Realism, which started during Stalinism, and remained the official artistic expression until the end of the socialist period. In the following four sections, this essay covers the politically approved appropriations of these four contemporary artistic movements in dress practices under socialism