socialism chic.

If you believe the Republican misinformation machine, all of my fellow Obama supporters are socialists. Or at least, we're down for the allegedly socialist "redistribution of wealth."

This week the Victoria and Albert Museum (London) begins a new show "Beyond Espionage: Fashion under Socialism." Using footage from newsreels and documentaries from Czechoslavakia and East Germany, these program analyzes the role of fashion as Eastern Blog propaganda tool.

From the article/interview on Dazed Digital :

"there was a difference between ‘official’ fashion and what was worn by the people on a daily basis. The ‘official’ fashion was heavily ideologised. The term ‘fashion’ itself was rejected as a wasteful phenomenon of Western capitalism. In the Eastern Bloc, the concept ‘clothing culture’ became important."

"You could say fashion – or rather clothing culture, as Renate says - was used to really drum socialism home. Fashion, as well as other areas of design, architecture and of course fine art were all embraced as important media of the Cold War propaganda. The key message in the post-war era, throughout the 1950s and spilling into the 1960s, was to promote a culture that offered civilian, everyday, no-nonsense clothes for the working man or woman, rationalised and standardised, rejecting ‘Western’ notions of luxury, glamour and extravagance."

I can't help but think that this is the perfect time to reject the idea of luxury items like non-functional, hard-to-wear haute couture...