Fashion in Film, ‘Beyond Espionage: Fashion under Socialism’, Cold War Modern, co-curated with Marketa Uhlirova
Victoria and Albert Museum, 31 October 2008
British Film Institute Southbank, 8 January 2009

This project featured a selection of some of the most eloquent newsreels and documentaries on fashion made in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and Czechoslovakia during the 1950s, 60s and 70s. It offered a case study of how fashion was produced and presented in two Warsaw Pact regimes characterised by state control, nationalisation and the centrally planned economy. The programme highlighted above all the newsreel, a weekly or monthly collection of actualities in which fashion featured regularly, not only for entertainment, but often as part of Cold War propaganda. These shorts illustrated the politicised nature of fashion in two countries where collections were conceived as part of five- or ten-year economic plans. Designs were shown to women in factories or other locations associated with the worker, and compared at annual International Fashion Congresses for socialist countries. The newsreels demonstrated how dress under socialism was meant to serve the working woman in her daily life, as opposed to making her a prisoner of time-consuming trends and wasteful fads, as 'capitalist' fashion was perceived to do.

Much of the critical thinking behind fashion creation under socialism came up against limited economic capacities, resulting in shortages or quantities of ill-fitting synthetic garments. Yet the 'clothing culture' that was created here was also at odds with people’s desires. It resulted in a tradition of home-made wardrobes, comparable to Britain’s 'make do and mend' and other national programmes promoted during the Second World War. In exploring the rhetoric of 'socialist' fashion, ‘Beyond Espionage’ tacitly reveals some of the tensions and cracks in the system.