On the afternoon of July 13, 2015, the 2nd GHC Seminar was held in conjunction with the 3rd Workshop of Linking Cloth-Clothing Globally (LCCG), featuring Assoc. Prof. Larissa Zakharova of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris as the invited speaker.

 

Larissa Zakharova (EHESS, France)

“Soviet Fashion Industry during the Cold War Period: Constraints of State Socialism and Foreign Influence”

 

Zakharova began by outlining the nature of fashion in the USSR constrained by the political system. Given that fashion fundamentally contradicted the concept of a socialist planned economy and classless society, the Soviet Union pursued a type of fashion that differed from so-called “Western” or “Bourgeois” fashion. Designers were public servants whose task was to impart “good taste” that took into consideration TPO (Time, Place, Occasion) to the masses, and domestic fashion magazines were educational media to this end. In terms of the clothing that was actually produced, clothing factories still used old patterns even in the early 1960s. So, although there was an apparel industry, there was no fashion industry.

 

This began to change at the end of the 1950s. The government was aware of the problems of the domestic apparel industry, and hoping to find new possibilities through contact with capitalist countries, began importing machinery, tools, and consumable goods from Western countries, hosting state-sponsored industrial fairs, and dispatching designers overseas. For example, a fashion show of Christian Dior couture was held in Moscow in 1959, and an effort was made to incorporate design elements from Yves Saint Laurent into sarafan (Russian folk dress) and other traditional clothing. The evolution of clothing and fashion during this period paralleled the transformation of Soviet consumer culture. Contact with the West was increasing through the import of movies, fashion magazines, visits to the Soviet Union by Western tourists, visits to the West by Soviet tourists, the dispatch of Soviet officials to the West, and the smuggling of contraband goods. Various efforts, including legislative measures, were made to introduce private sector market mechanisms to compensate for the shortcomings of the planned economy. Competition in the private sector led to improvement in the service-orientation of State-run clothing manufacturing.

 

That is to say, during this period when the iron curtain was starting to lift, the Soviet Union began to incorporate Western elements such as capitalism, influence of demand and consumption on production, and fashion in a controlled manner as an alternative to the socialism, planned economy, and “good taste” of the Soviet Union up to that point with the aim of bringing about reforms that would resolve domestic problems. However, Western elements that penetrated in various ways ended up changing daily life and consumer culture in the Soviet Union but failed to bring about the desired reforms.

 

The presentation was followed by a Q&A session in which the presentation was discussed from various directions including the scope of “Western countries” as perceived by the then Soviet Union and the Soviet system for fashion creation.

 

The seminar explored the changes that occurred during a period in which the East sought contact with the West using the example of clothing (concrete objects) and fashion (elements influencing people’s aesthetic sense and lifestyles) and was extremely valuable.

 

(TSUNODA Nao)