Soviet fashion? It`s a contradiction in terms to some foreigners, and a mystery to many Soviet citizens.
Given the view on the streets, where the prime silhouette is baggy, the seams saggy and the dominant color gray, as it has been for 50 years, Soviet clothing seems to be a spectacular triumph of function over style. Given the sparse stocks in the stores, most comrades have little choice but to be happy with what they can get.
Nonetheless, prompted by perestroika and growing international enchantment with all things Russian, the Soviet fashion industry is tooling up to cash in on the long-term potential of exporting their goods and striving to spruce up the perception of Soviet style.
For starters, the Soviets want to dump the dumpy image of their women. With the help of savvy, russet-haired Soviet First Lady Raisa Gorbachev, who has demonstrated what some consider a more than comradely interest in couture, Soviets seem eager to dispel the ham-fisted, thunder-thighed image of their women.
Upgrading the Soviet fashion profile will prove to be a tougher task. The brightest lights in Soviet design tend to be a handful of young avant-gardists, whose talent is usually hidden away in the tiny apartments where they live and work. Committed to a unique Soviet look, their styles reinterpret the silhouettes, motifs and colors of Soviet history.
Mavericks outside the official, state-run Soviet fashion apparatus, they scrabble for materials where they can find them, make their own designs by hand, show them where few will ever see them and sell them to the even fewer who dare wear them.
A few steps behind
Compared to these young designers, Soviet state-run fashion houses suffer less from production woes, but they are shorter on the imagination needed to create a distinct Soviet product. The result is often awkward, dated versions of Western fashion. Though there are some three dozen design houses churning out styles for more than 800 state-run factories in the Soviet Union, few produce items that would be considered close to fashionable in the West.
Soviet fashions are far better than the potato-sack chic proferred in the now-infamous Wendy`s commercials of 1985, which almost put a dent in detente with their cheeky sack-and-flashlight depiction of Soviet ”eefningwear.”
Still, they generally remain far behind the West in quality and style.
Under perestroika`s encouragement of individual initiative, many observers see the glimmer of a more stylish future in the many independent fashion co-operatives currently springing up. Still, most are in the embryo stage, and even in their prime will have only limited production. Meanwhile, the best Soviet designs, whether state-manufactured or not, are so rarely to be found, except in special shops earmarked for the elite, that most Soviet women have never laid eyes on them.
The supply side of Soviet fashion suffers from shortages of raw materials, modern manufacturing equipment and know-how, plus reluctant-to-change factories; on the demand side, consumers lack exposure to
international fashion news.
A different meaning
”Here in the U.S.S.R., there is a completely different understanding of the word `fashion,` ” says Marina Krainaya, a style columnist for the Communicator, a weekly color newspaper published by the Communist Youth organization.
”A Soviet woman coming into a store wants to buy something nice, but she has no idea what is `nice.` It`s not just a question of lack of information;
it`s education,” says Krainaya, 30, who, on a chilly Moscow spring afternoon was wearing a rabbit jacket and T-shirt emblazoned ”San Francisco” over jeans tucked into boots. Under a plaid British driving cap, her long dark hair was in a thick braid.
”The very idea of a `nice` dress wasn`t `nice.` A dress was just to cover yourself, to keep warm,” she says, explaining that especially for older Soviet women, functionality was the virtue. To demand anything more amounted to wanton frivolity.
”The old generation was not so fashionable,” agrees Tatiana Balandina, director of the state-run House of Fashion, the Soviet Union`s oldest and largest design source. ”After the war, they were busy rebuilding the country and not interested in fashion. It is only now, with a younger generation, that people who grew up in a peaceful time are interested in fashion. This new generation is growing more and more demanding, and it will act as a whip for our factories,” she adds hopefully.
Some small steps
Indeed, there are many signs of change-if small ones.
Two years ago, Krainaya scored a coup by getting a fashion photo on the cover of the Communicator-a radical departure from its normal, generic ”moral illustration,” as she puts it. ”That was the first time and the last time,” she says wryly. But she continues to do her part to ”educate” Soviet women through her controversial column, ”Ask Marina,” which includes international fashion news grubbed from friends who have visited the West, and such eye-opening articles as ”I Was a Burda Model.”
In a country where fashion information is at a premium and foreign fashion magazines are nearly impossible to get, ”Burda” is a magic word.
The West German owners of Burda, a distinctly middle-of-the-road fashion magazine, clearly had an eye on the future when they began publishing a Russian-language version in the Soviet Union a couple of years ago and including it as a gift to those who pay 10 rubles (or about $16 at the official exchange rate) to attend the frequent public fashion shows Burda sponsors in the U.S.S.R.
Not available by subscription to Soviets, the magazine, coveted not only for its photos but for its dress patterns, has become such a hot item that it goes for 25 rubles (about $40) on the black market and is treated for barter purposes as if it were a piece of hard currency.
Indeed, on a recent rainy Saturday afternoon, as the solid German models strutted their rather conservative stuff before a packed house in the auditorium of a hotel in the Lenin Hills, the audience seemed far less interested in the somewhat dowdy dirndls than they did in the glossy new copies of Burda clutched on their laps.
Asked why she had braved the weather to see clothes that are not even available in the U.S.S.R., Marina, a 30-ish housewife, admitted that it was the only way to get the magazine, adding plaintively, ”We would like to be au courant of modern fashion.”
A resident superstar
For people without connections like Marina, Burda and its fashion shows may represent the closest they will ever get to the lofty precincts of Viyacheslav Zaitsev, the Soviet Union`s first and, for the moment, only fashion superstar.
At 51, a flamboyant man given to dandyish clothes, with an elastic Howdy Doody face under a spiky crew cut, Zaitsev is the best-known Soviet designer and the only one to have his own label and his own salon, Dom Modi, ensconced in a flashy, neon-lit building complete with a plush boutique, workrooms and lavish theater for fashion shows.
A Soviet fashion pioneer who defected from the confines of the House of Fashion to found his own atelier under the aegis of the less restrictive Ministry of Services six years ago, Zaitsev is admired by younger Soviet designers for his guts, but not for his designs, which they consider little more than dull knockoffs of Western looks. It is an accurate observation.
Fortunately, his clientele of well-heeled ”Western wannabes” sees things differently. Known affectionately as Slava to his fans-who include Raisa Gorbachev-Zaitsev is a favorite of the elite, such as the wives of Eastern Bloc diplomats. They fill the seats at his exuberant weekly shows and can afford prices for clothes, sold only in his salon, that average about $260 but go much, much higher. And that`s the way he likes it.
Sitting in his stark white office above his salon, he says, with typical modesty, ”There are more customers than we can handle.” Although he says,
”I just want to be of use to the people,” in almost the same breath he admits, ”I don`t want to cheapen myself. I don`t want my clothes in just regular shops or department stores.”
He would, however, like to see them in upscale U.S. stores, but is still smarting from his first U.S. showing in October, 1987, which was roundly panned as being too dowdy, too dated and too expensive. Zaitsev is undaunted, dismissing his reviews with the acid observation, ”I thought America was a more progressive country.”
