“Proletarian in Content, National in (Uni)form:” Fashion, Modernization, and National Identity in the Soviet Union

Abstract

The fashion industry in the USSR developed as a socialist institution, premised on modernizing and proletarianizing a bourgeois and westward-facing system. When the All-Union House of Design (ODMO) opened in 1949, clothing designers believed that the usage of ethnic motifs based on the national costumes of the constituent republics provided the simplest means of creating clothing that reflected and celebrated the uniqueness of the USSR. Following Stalin’s death, fashion designers helped build a clothing industry that was compatible with international style trends, while endeavoring to maintain the basic tenets of Soviet design: practical, beautiful, and mass-producible clothing that reflected ethnic or national traditions. The continued utilization of ethnic and national motifs presented an image domestically and internationally of a unified, modern Soviet Union that allowed for national self-expression and beautified its citizens.