Revolutionary Fashion; Creating the image of the future in early 1920s Russia

by Isaac Sinclair

The early years of the USSR were exciting and turbulent. Rapid industrialisation, education, and the rise of gender equality led to a feeling of great hope for the country’s future. Whilst women who lived in rural areas continued to wear traditional hand-sewn Russian dress, women living in urban areas of Russia began to style themselves based on the western ‘New Woman’ who was independent, childless, smoked, and drank alcohol.

To build on the notion of women leaving their heritage behind, many Muslim women abandoned the hijab and joined Komsomol, the Young Communist League. Female Komsomol members were known as Komsomlkas, and they fashioned an androgynous look by adopting shorter hairstyles, leather jackets, and men’s tunics and belts. The Komsomol look was far from ‘feminine’ and caused a stir; in fact, the Komsomol look was even immortalised in calendars and propaganda posters. Although the Komsomol trend had phased out by the mid1920s, it made a reappearance during the second world war as many young women purchased military uniforms.

Such fashion, in combination with the active role of Soviet women in the second world war, caused western citizens to view the Soviet woman as masculine. Despite Stalin’s efforts to return to gender traditionalism, western views of the masculine Soviet woman were reinforced by the shapeless unisex work uniforms present in 1950s Russia.

Yet the Komsomolka look was not the most radical. Following Marxist beliefs that fashion was fickle and unnecessary, the Proletkult - a group of young revolutionaries - proposed the prozodezhda. The prozodezhda was the failed Soviet rival of the flapper dress, and it was created with the aim of freeing women from ‘fashion slavery’. With striking triangles and geometric patterns, the prozodezhda was a practical dress essential for the new Soviet worker.

As indicated by the above comment, the bold look was not a hit, as female workers preferred to fashion more traditional floral garments. Failing to gain mass popularity, the prozodezhda was expensive to produce, thus becoming inaccessible.

This revolutionary development soon came to an end and the Proletkult group ceased to exist past the 1920s. Under Stalin fashion was no longer perceived as bourgeois, and fashion houses were created to rival the west.