Needle and thread. Transformations in Soviet dress

The aim of this research is to observe the everyday and social history of the Soviet Union from a new perspective: material culture and its impact on the social and cultural life. Central to this approach is the question as to how the form, sense and use of everyday objects transform themselves under political, economic and social conditions. We will be focusing on a specific consumer item: that of individual handmade clothing (at home or by a dressmaker). Taking this as an example, different research fields will be covered: this methodology enables the establishment of more areas for research - clothing, women and gender analyses, as well as the analysis of consumption history; social history and the history of everyday life in the Soviet Union serve as the connecting thread. This project`s central theme is the question as to whether individual clothing production made a change in the everyday clothes of Soviet women, accounted for a new consumer development and led to a transformation in social values through this individualization. How did the process of individualization in attitudes to clothing set itself in motion, given the various political, economical, ideological and cultural realities and norms? This project draws on the new research into Stalinism; it therefore places the Soviet Union`s development after Stalin`s death (1953) as a temporal starting point and finishes in 1985 (the end of the Brezhnev era). The middle of the 1950s can be seen as a turning point in Soviet consumption policy, which went together with political and social transformations. Beginning with the role of material culture and its social and cultural meaning, we will systematically examine the question as to what connections there were between the consumption demand and its legitimation with the state and social power relations. This approach not only opens up new perspectives for social, economic and political analysis and later break up of the Soviet Union, but also allows an understanding of the meaning of these processes for the (de)stabilization of structures of domination and, where possible, a discovery of new facets of everyday life, which illustrate the Soviet citizen`s behavioral patterns (individual assimilation and delineation processes) and visualize his/her desires and needs.

The project investigates the everyday and social history of the Soviet Union between 1953 (Stalins death) and 1985 (the beginning of Perestroika) from the perspective of material culture. The development of fashion in clothing located at the interface between the individual and society and its relationship to questions of consumption, sexual relations and the approach to and delineation of western consumer societies of this period is focused on. These processes are understood as cultural indicators that signal a vitally dynamic development in Soviet society, as this has been visible up to now in research into the so-called Stagnation Period. Lastly, the results of the investigation describe a shift in values that is based upon the formation of alternatively designed models related to established Soviet norms, models based upon (dressing) behaviour, consumption and identity and which paved the way for the dramatic social and economic changes of the Perestroika Era.The research work within the framework of the study was carried out in two subprojects that comprise in each case different methodological approaches and research materials. While the subproject Clothing Language in the Artistic Text deals with literary texts and films, the subproject Tailor-Made Modelling of the Self investigates womens and fashion magazines, advice literature and theoretical work on the subject of Soviet fashion and consumption. Both parts of the study on clothing discourses in historical progress and to this, along with the development in fashion and the respective style and taste debates, also belong questions of gender construction and consumer behaviour visualising cultural everyday use and illustrating the change in values in Soviet society in this period. Two central areas of investigation individual manufacture and cultural transfer show these things represented: the individual manufacture and hand-stitching of clothing has until now only been explained from the perspective of a shortage of goods; the analyses within the project, however, elucidate upon the fact that the significance of this practice has altered considerably from the 1960s to the 1980s and was increasingly visible in the sphere of individual creativity. This investigation into fashion in the clothing industry as a medium for cultural transfer makes it obvious that Soviet fashion did not as is often claimed merely imitate Western trends in fashion, but that complex strategies of transfer and adaptation existed, so that an independent and unique development in Soviet fashion becomes obvious, which simultaneously displays many parallels to Western development in fashion. In all, the investigative results of the project represent important foundations for a new overall image of the social developments and changes in the USSR and can offer wide-ranging links to further in-depth research into socio-historical and both political and economic studies.