Paula Cocozza: East Germans Endeavored To Create Socialist Style
When the German Democratic Republic launched its first Berlin fashion week in the summer of 1958, lectures were given to instruct workers on all the important tenets of modern socialist thinking: "To each type the suitable haircut," for instance, and "Stronger women (as the ruling Communist party liked to describe its larger female members) can also dress fashionably." Fashion was offered as proof of the modernity of socialism. Improvised catwalks were set up in factories for lunch-break shows, with bicycle lamps their impromptu spotlights. "To be well dressed," the regime decreed, "is a positive expression of the socialist way of life."
The pictures shown on these pages were all taken by Gunter Rubitzsch, not a famous fashion photographer but a workmanlike snapper who between 1964 and 1980 photographed a series of part-time models wearing clothes produced by a group of state-owned factories. His pictures appeared in a magazine called Textil Service, published to accompany the biannual trade fair in Leipzig, where the outfits - from high fashion to clothes to mow the lawn in - were exhibited. Here, fancy food, truffles, pates were displayed alongside such wonders as the Purimix, a device that could variously suck up dust from the carpet and make milkshakes.
East Germany's place on the fashion map was complicated. Backed and flanked by the other Soviet bloc countries, yet itself encircling West Berlin, it looked both ways for inspiration. But however much the state wanted to create a distinctively socialist style, and impress its capitalist neighbours, the influence of the west was inescapable. That became obvious at the reunification of East and West Germany. Fashion historian Rebecca Menzel, author of Jeans In The GDR: The Deeper Meaning Of A Slack, remembers it clearly. "You could see a stonewashed denim jacket or trousers on almost every GDR citizen who climbed the wall on November 9 1989," she says.
Aside from a few headscarves and the fact that the men all look like spies, it is much harder to identify the Soviet element in GDR style from these pictures. Professor Thomas Greis, a former designer with East Germany's most prestigious chain of shops, Exquisit, ruefully recalls the regime's attempts to create a "specialist socialist fashion" in the early 70s. The clothes were simple, "friendly colours, friendly patterns", he says. "They tried to produce something timeless, something optimistic. But it wasn't fashion. Nobody wanted to buy it and nobody wanted to produce it." The Soviet Union, Greis says, was "absolutely unimportant" in fashion terms. The most influential Soviet designer of the day, Slava Zaitsev, the soul of Moscow's House Of Fashion, was a very good friend and they saw each other often: Zaitsev was always in Berlin - but "to learn something from us".
Like the Purimix, the clothes expressed a utilitarian intent (though they didn't quite stretch to different attachments for different occasions). The manufacturers, operating on a shoestring, would shuffle the nuts and bolts of design to create the appearance of difference: collars, pockets, plackets and so on were diversely attached to the same basic silhouette in every possible combination. That is why, at a squint, these photographs look a little like the illustrated envelopes of old-fashioned dressmaking patterns. A tie belt replaces a buckle here, a pleated yoke substitutes for a plain one there, colours and prints alternate. Even in their differences, the clothes resemble a uniform. The lack of choice meant that people often ended up wearing identical outfits. Several East Germans I spoke to recall how, on any given night at the theatre, swaths of dresses and suits in the audience would be distinguishable only by the different-shaped bodies within them. One described a teenage party where three out of 10 girls were wearing the same dress, same belt, same shoes and same bag.
Under socialism, as under Trinny and Susannah, all women were promised clothing to suit their body shape. "To be round," the GDR planning commission declared in a public pronouncement, "is no misfortune." There was also an unflagging belief in the ability of synthetic fabrics to deliver the future. Nylon was named "Dederon" the better to mimic the sound of "DDR".
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Occasionally, western designers took their cue from the eastern bloc. In 1964, the British magazine Queen noted that the infamous "Space Age" collection of the French couturier Andre Courreges - all white pantsuits and futuristic helmet hats - "couldn't have been dreamed of in pre-Sputnik days". (Courreges's signature white calf-length boots, or approximations of them, eventually recrossed the Iron Curtain to reappear in the GDR.) Yves Saint Laurent's celebrated Ballets Russes collection in 1976 took inspiration from imperial Russia, transforming traditional garments into exuberant costume; 10 years later, another French designer, Thierry Mugler, showed Lenin pins and red kerchiefs in his autumn/winter collection. No wonder the cold war was partly fought out between Raisa Gorbachev and Nancy Reagan in fashion terms, Raisa setting out her stall on her first visit to the west in 1984 with a pair of gold lame sandals with chain straps, Nancy hitting back with a powerful collection of red couture gowns (was she reclaiming the colour?).
The pictures shown on these pages were all taken by Gunter Rubitzsch, not a famous fashion photographer but a workmanlike snapper who between 1964 and 1980 photographed a series of part-time models wearing clothes produced by a group of state-owned factories. His pictures appeared in a magazine called Textil Service, published to accompany the biannual trade fair in Leipzig, where the outfits - from high fashion to clothes to mow the lawn in - were exhibited. Here, fancy food, truffles, pates were displayed alongside such wonders as the Purimix, a device that could variously suck up dust from the carpet and make milkshakes.
East Germany's place on the fashion map was complicated. Backed and flanked by the other Soviet bloc countries, yet itself encircling West Berlin, it looked both ways for inspiration. But however much the state wanted to create a distinctively socialist style, and impress its capitalist neighbours, the influence of the west was inescapable. That became obvious at the reunification of East and West Germany. Fashion historian Rebecca Menzel, author of Jeans In The GDR: The Deeper Meaning Of A Slack, remembers it clearly. "You could see a stonewashed denim jacket or trousers on almost every GDR citizen who climbed the wall on November 9 1989," she says.
Aside from a few headscarves and the fact that the men all look like spies, it is much harder to identify the Soviet element in GDR style from these pictures. Professor Thomas Greis, a former designer with East Germany's most prestigious chain of shops, Exquisit, ruefully recalls the regime's attempts to create a "specialist socialist fashion" in the early 70s. The clothes were simple, "friendly colours, friendly patterns", he says. "They tried to produce something timeless, something optimistic. But it wasn't fashion. Nobody wanted to buy it and nobody wanted to produce it." The Soviet Union, Greis says, was "absolutely unimportant" in fashion terms. The most influential Soviet designer of the day, Slava Zaitsev, the soul of Moscow's House Of Fashion, was a very good friend and they saw each other often: Zaitsev was always in Berlin - but "to learn something from us".
Like the Purimix, the clothes expressed a utilitarian intent (though they didn't quite stretch to different attachments for different occasions). The manufacturers, operating on a shoestring, would shuffle the nuts and bolts of design to create the appearance of difference: collars, pockets, plackets and so on were diversely attached to the same basic silhouette in every possible combination. That is why, at a squint, these photographs look a little like the illustrated envelopes of old-fashioned dressmaking patterns. A tie belt replaces a buckle here, a pleated yoke substitutes for a plain one there, colours and prints alternate. Even in their differences, the clothes resemble a uniform. The lack of choice meant that people often ended up wearing identical outfits. Several East Germans I spoke to recall how, on any given night at the theatre, swaths of dresses and suits in the audience would be distinguishable only by the different-shaped bodies within them. One described a teenage party where three out of 10 girls were wearing the same dress, same belt, same shoes and same bag.
Under socialism, as under Trinny and Susannah, all women were promised clothing to suit their body shape. "To be round," the GDR planning commission declared in a public pronouncement, "is no misfortune." There was also an unflagging belief in the ability of synthetic fabrics to deliver the future. Nylon was named "Dederon" the better to mimic the sound of "DDR".
...
Occasionally, western designers took their cue from the eastern bloc. In 1964, the British magazine Queen noted that the infamous "Space Age" collection of the French couturier Andre Courreges - all white pantsuits and futuristic helmet hats - "couldn't have been dreamed of in pre-Sputnik days". (Courreges's signature white calf-length boots, or approximations of them, eventually recrossed the Iron Curtain to reappear in the GDR.) Yves Saint Laurent's celebrated Ballets Russes collection in 1976 took inspiration from imperial Russia, transforming traditional garments into exuberant costume; 10 years later, another French designer, Thierry Mugler, showed Lenin pins and red kerchiefs in his autumn/winter collection. No wonder the cold war was partly fought out between Raisa Gorbachev and Nancy Reagan in fashion terms, Raisa setting out her stall on her first visit to the west in 1984 with a pair of gold lame sandals with chain straps, Nancy hitting back with a powerful collection of red couture gowns (was she reclaiming the colour?).