Radical chic : Avant-garde fashion design in the Soviet 1920s

Radical chic: #Avant-garde fashion design in the Soviet 1920s | The Charnel-House
▻https://thecharnelhouse.org/2014/07/05/radical-chic-avant-garde-fashion-design-in-the-soviet-1920s

https://i1.wp.com/thecharnelhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/93016550_large_1927vasha_znakomaya11.jpg?fit=675%2C675&ssl=1 https://i0.wp.com/thecharnelhouse.org//wp-content/uploads/2014/07/popova-1.jpg?resize=439%2C621 https://i0.wp.com/thecharnelhouse.org//wp-content/uploads/2014/07/utility-clothing-tatlin-design-for-mans-coat-1923-charcoal-on-tracing-paper-107x71-5-cm-bakhrushin-museum.jpg?resize=440%2C671 https://i1.wp.com/thecharnelhouse.org//wp-content/uploads/2014/07/tumblr_n22lcfntsw1rvujcpo1_500.jpg?resize=418%2C714

Ref­er­ence was made in passing to of­fi­cial “mes­sages” about waist-to-hip ra­tios passed down from the 1930s, but it seemed just leap out of the blue. Not en­tirely sure what she’s talk­ing about.

It would be in­ter­est­ing to know what she made of the really av­ant-garde fash­ion ex­per­i­ments of the 1920s, however, with Var­vara Stepan­ova’s col­or­ful tex­tile pat­terns, Li­ubov Pop­ova’s sportswear, Vladi­mir Tat­lin’s work out­fits, and Vera Mukh­ina’s gen­er­al ward­robe ad­vice.

These designs were ex­pli­citly in­ten­ded for mass pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion, cloth­ing the masses. It was part of the fu­sion of art with life, de­signed to make the world more beau­ti­ful. Pop­ova once re­por­ted:

No artist­ic suc­cess has giv­en me such sat­is­fac­tion as the sight of a peas­ant or a work­er buy­ing a length of ma­ter­i­al de­signed by me.

I’ve re­cently come across a num­ber of im­ages of av­ant-garde fash­ion design in the So­viet 1920s. Quite dif­fer­ent from the chic styles pre­ferred in bour­geois France at the time, out­side of per­haps the mod­ish cu­bism of Sophia Delaunay. So I’m post­ing them here. En­joy.

#Mode #design #textile #avant-garde_soviétique #urss #union_soviétique