Soviet fashion, or fashion in times of scarcity
To understand what fashion was like in the USSR, you first need to understand what life was like there. Imagine a world that’s reverse to the one we’re living in now.
There was no advertisement to tell you this brand is better than the other. When you went shopping you didn’t want to buy it all — in fact there was probably nothing in the store that you liked. Instead of complaining you didn’t have enough money, you actually had enough of it. However, no amount of money could buy you the prettiest or highest quality stuff.
I come from a post-soviet country, and I’ve always been fascinated by how different life was for my parents just 30 or so years ago, so I asked my mum to tell me what fashion was like when she was young.
What were the clothes like?
“The clothes you found at stores were not nice and not fashionable, and they were usually made somewhere nearby. There was a very limited choice of clothes, they would pretty much all look the same, and when they were sold out they’d bring more, maybe same models made out of slightly different fabrics.
The quality of clothes was judged by the country they were made in. The best shoes were Czech or Polish, and the best suits came from Finland. These were scarce and so were called ‘deficit goods’.”
What were the shops like?
“There were no brands. There were no retail companies so shop names were very direct and were just called after the goods it sold (like ‘Ready-made clothes’) or they were just neutral (like ‘Smile’, or names of nearby rivers).
Everything was nationalised so clothes were made in a few factories scattered around the Union. There were these warehouses where goods arrived from different states and then they’d be re-distributed to different regions in the country according to population size. So bigger towns would get more things and also the nicer high quality things. If you knew people who worked in these warehouse or clothes shops you could get better stuff. As good things were scarce they were hidden in the backroom of the shop and not made available for random people to buy.”
What was shopping like?
“You had to make an appointment with the person you knew at the shop, and they’d take you to the backroom to show you what else they’ve got that’s not on the shop shelves. You could then buy what you wanted. It wouldn’t be much more expensive than the other stuff, it would just be nicer and higher quality things that weren’t otherwise available. Your friend wouldn’t be making a profit — you’d just pay the real price for the item. People traded favours. Perhaps you worked at a meat factory and could access some ‘deficit products’ that weren’t available on the shop shelves, and you’d make them available to this friend who had sold you some ‘deficit clothes’. There was often shortage of certain meat products, so if you worked at a meat factory you were very well off (i.e. you had nice high quality things).
Getting high quality things wasn’t a matter of money, it was a matter of who you knew. My mum had friends everywhere so for us it wasn’t a problem. When I was small we never bought straight from the shop, we’d always get better prettier clothes from somewhere else. I remember she had a Japanese jacket.
Bigger towns would get better things from the distribution centres, so those ‘deficit goods’ that weren’t officially available in our town could sometimes be bought straight from the stores in the capital city. Some people would travel to Moscow or Saint Petersburg to get scarce goods and illegally sell them at back home. Having any business was illegal. There were also these people who ran illegal markets of these ‘deficit goods’. Their apartment would be like a market where some people brought things to sell and others came to buy, and this middle person would take a small ‘fee’. But you had to know these people too. However if you really wanted something it actually wasn’t that difficult to find someone who knows someone who knows the person who can get what you want.”
So how did you know what was fashionable if it wasn’t sold in the shops?
“A sense of fashion mostly came from foreign European movies (although there weren’t that many of them). We never saw anything American. Also Russian stars from Moscow would wear fashionable clothes, we’d see them on TV. From time to time you’d be able to get fashion magazines from Cuba, but you wouldn’t ever be able to get them straight from the shop because they were so rare, you had to know someone at the Newsagent’s.
Some people had relatives in America (when the country was being occupied some people left for the USA) so they would get parcels of clothes. Those were the best ones, and the coolest. They’d get jeans, trainers, branded sports trousers, t-shirts with prints. These things weren’t manufactured in USSR, you couldn’t get them anywhere.”
Did people make a lot of clothes themselves?
“Yes, having clothes made was very popular. A lot of people knew how to sew and knit. Having business was illegal so some women would sew and knit in their spare time, and would sell things illegally. Because there was shortage of clothes, fabrics and threads, especially nice ones, you would re-make the same clothes multiple times to make it last. I remember my mum had a white under-dress that I died and wore as an over-dress. You had to add something to things you bought, change them to make them interesting and different.”
So what did clothes symbolise?
“Firstly, the clothes you were wearing demonstrated your creativity and imagination.
Secondly, they showed how cool you were — if you were able to source scarce rare things you were cool.”
Although life during the times of scarcity wasn’t easy, I love the fact that fashion back then was mostly what we call ‘ethical’ nowadays — so many clothes were handmade, reused and recycled, and because there was no variety in manufacturing, clothes were a tool for people to express their creativity.
