MODERNITY, TEMPORALITY AND SOVIET FASHION IN LENINGRAD DURING THE 1950S AND THE 1960S

Abstract

The article examines the process of clothing design at the Soviet official fashion institution, the Leningrad Fashion House, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Based on the archival materials and visual sources, the research aims at exploring Soviet fashion as a manifestation of modernity. One of the key ideological and political agendas of the state leaders of that period was the aim to overcome backwardness. However, compared to Western fashion design, Soviet clothing always looked “frozen in time”. The article investigates the specifics of temporality of Soviet fashion. The analysis of unique sources exhibits that Soviet fashion had several temporal orders. The first temporal order was formed due to the different speeds of design and production. Class, social and cultural inequalities influenced the formation of various fashions in the Soviet Union, which could retard from each other. Soviet designers did not set themselves the goal of creating a completely alternative variant of modern fashion. Understanding of modernity was shaped by the transnational entanglements of ideas and practices, as Western fashion remained the major reference point for what it meant to be modern. The key theoretical result of the article is that, being in different temporalities, Soviet fashion indicated different dimensions of modernity.