Women's clothing of the early 20th century. Women's fashion at the beginning of the 20th century. Children's fashion. Originals. Photo. Edwardian silhouette - myths and reality

New way of life

Soviet fashion formed and marched forward on its own special route. It was created by talented professionals who survived the years of devastation and bloody terror, and corrected and directed by party officials and employees of state security agencies. was formed from the skill of tailors of the past century and the innovative ideas of the artists of the young country of the Soviets, from clothing models created by specialists grown by Soviet universities, from mass clothing produced by numerous clothing factories, from Soviet fashion magazines, from the fashion magazines of the fraternal socialist republics and bourgeois Western publications legally entering the country, falling into the USSR because of the "Iron Curtain", from the stories of people who have been abroad, from copying by domestic craftswomen of the clothes that they brought "from there", from imitation images of Soviet and foreign cinema.

The October socialist revolution, which abolished the classes of the nobility and the bourgeoisie and approved the new social composition of society, inevitably influenced the formation of the fashion of the Soviet country, in which there was no longer room for luxurious toilets. The working people of the young country of the Soviets had to look as befits the builder of a new society, although exactly how, no one knew exactly, and everyone who was destined to survive the October Revolution simply had to adapt to the harsh features of military and civilian labor and the life of the first post-revolutionary years.

Men and women appeared on the city streets in leather commissar jackets, leather caps and soldier's tunics, belted with leather belts. Satin blouses, worn with city jackets, became the most popular men's clothing. Women dressed in dresses made of canvas, straight skirts of their soldier's cloth, chintz blouses and cloth jackets. Men's tunics, which migrated to the women's wardrobe, emphasized the equality between the Soviet woman and the Soviet man.

The cult clothing of the new time is a leather jacket associated with the images of the Chekist and Commissar, which has become a symbol of the revolutionary Soviet Russia fashion, rather strange clothes for a country in terrible ruin. Where could such high-quality leather come from in the first years of Soviet power, who sewed so many jackets of the same type in such quantities? In fact, the famous leather jackets were made before the revolution, during the First World War for aviation battalions. At that time, they were never fully in demand, and after the October Revolution they were found in warehouses and began to be issued to Chekists and commissars as uniforms.

The sign of the new post-revolutionary time was the red scarf - a symbol of the liberation of a woman, now it was pulled over the forehead and tied at the back of the head, and not under the chin, as was traditionally done before. Shoes, male and female, consisted of boots, boots, canvas slippers, rubber boots.

The Komsomol members put on “Jungsturmovki” - paramilitary clothing borrowed from the German youth communist organization “Red Jungsturm”, which was a tunic or jacket of various shades of green, with a turn-down collar and patch pockets, worn with a belt and a harness, and a cap on the head. The girls wore jungshturmovkas with a dark-colored straight skirt. On the basis of the Jungsturmovka, a single uniform for Komsomol members was developed. As the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper wrote: “The Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League recommends that local organizations introduce a uniform form of the Komsomol by voluntariness. For the sample, you should take the form of the Moscow Komsomol - khaki (dark green). The Central Committee considers it desirable to introduce this form in all city organizations by the 14th International Youth Day.

The austerity of the proletarian costume in 1918-1921 was due not only to a worldview that denied everything connected with the "old world", but also to the most difficult economic conditions, devastation, civil war that followed the revolution and the most brutal policy of war communism. People were simply dying of hunger, they were not able to get basic hygiene products and household items, what kind of fashion could we talk about. There were clothes that personified a harsh and ruthless time.

Things were sewn from canvas, coarse linen, coarse calico, soldier's cloth, baize, bumazei, coarse wool. Starting from 1921 - 1922, when the transition to the New Economic Policy (NEP) was announced in the country and the process of restoring textile and clothing enterprises began, the first printed fabrics appeared, mainly cotton - chintz, satin, flannel.

One of the first mass costumes was the Red Army uniform. In 1918, a special commission was created to develop the form of the Red Army, and a competition was announced for the best samples of military clothing, in which such artists as Viktor Vasnetsov and Boris Kustodiev took part. The Russian historical costume was taken as the basis for the Red Army uniform. A year later, a helmet, overcoat, shirt, leather bast shoes were approved as a new uniform. Buttonhole trim, typical for old military uniforms, was side by side with red cuffs, collars and a star on the helmet, which repeated the ancient Russian form of sholom with aventail, thereby emphasizing the heroism and romance of the image. The new Red Army helmet, which was soon dubbed Budyonovka, lasted until the start of World War II.

The terrible, bloody collapse of the old world and the painful construction of the new, it would seem, should have condemned to non-existence such a phenomenon as fashion. Why and who needs it in the Soviet country? But against all odds 20s The 20th century became one of the most interesting periods in the history of domestic fashion.

In tsarist Russia at the end of the 19th century, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan were in the first place in the production of ready-made dresses. Clothing was produced mainly by handicraft workers from small workshops. There were few large sewing enterprises. Basically, they carried out government orders, producing uniforms, equipment and underwear for military and engineering units. But, in addition, many manufacturers of state-owned garments were the owners of well-known stores of ready-made dresses, shoes and haberdashery.
The largest garment industries in Russia were: partnership "Mandl and Reitz", which, in addition to the factory, had a ready-made dress trading house on Tverskaya (after the nationalization of the enterprise - factory No. 31 of the Mosshvey trust, then the Experimental and Technical Factory named after K. Zetkin, and in 1930 TsNIIShP - the Central Research Institute of the Clothing Industry, existing to this day); "Trading house K. Thiel and Co", which united the tannery and varnishing factory, military saddlery, ammunition and uniform, felt, glove, hosiery, factories, passed after bankruptcy in 1912 to the Moscow Joint-Stock Company Supplier (nationalized in 1918 and renamed Red Supplier, then which became the Moscow Factory of Technical Felt and the Moscow Felting and Felt Association (now CJSC Gorizont); "Association of manufactories of Timofey Katsepov and sons"- an industrial enterprise with a solid cash flow, since 1930 it was redesigned into the Voskresensky felt factory named after January 9 (modern OJSC Fetr).
Large firms of ready-made dresses and underwear were: trading house "M. and I. Mandl», trading house "Brothers N. and F. Petukhov" on Ilyinka; the legendary trade and industrial partnership Muir and Maryliz, owned one of the most famous department stores in Moscow on Petrovka, selling clothes, shoes, jewelry, perfumes, household items (nationalized in 1918, since 1922 the Central Department Store of the Central Universal Store TSUM); Petrovsky Passage, located between Petrovka and Neglinnaya streets, belonged to Vera Ivanovna Firsanova, the successor of the famous Moscowmerchant dynasty of the Firsanovs. The passage gathered under its arches more than fifty different trade pavilions, including shops of famous trading houses: Markushevich and Grigoriev. Silk and woolen fabrics, "Vikula Morozov, Konshin and sons", Veselkov and Tashin - fashionable materials for ladies' dresses», "Louis Kreutzer" - underwear and ties ", "Matilda Barish - corsets and umbrellas" etc. The major centers of trade were the Popov Passage on Kuznetsky Most, the Postnikov Passage on Tverskaya Street, the Lubyansky Passage on Lubyanka, the Sapozhnikov brothers' silk goods store on Ilyinka, the trading houses of Ludwig Knop, K. Malyutin and his sons, and many others. One of the most successful lingerie companies was a firm "Alschwang Brothers", and a trading house on Nikolskaya Street "Kandyrin and Co", which owned a linen factory. Famous men's dress shops in pre-revolutionary Moscow - Aye on Tverskaya, Alekseev Brothers on Rozhdestvenka, Chistyakov Brothers on Lubyanskaya Square, Dellos on Sretenka, Georges on Tverskaya, Duchard, Smith and Sons on the Kuznetsky bridge. Fashionable women's clothing was produced and sold by the "City of Lyon" on Lubyanka, "Louis Kreutzer" and "Madame Josephine" on Petrovka, and others.
Many Russian fabric manufacturers were famous not only in their own country, but also gained worldwide popularity. Especially successful were the Trekhgornaya manufactory, founded by the merchant Vasily Prokhorov, hence its other name - Prokhorovskaya (nationalized after the revolution, in 1936 it was named after F. E. Dzerzhinsky); The Ivanovo-Voznesensk manufactories of the Grachevs, Garelins, Ivan Yamanovsky, Diodor Burylin and others. The famous cotton-printing manufactory "Emil Tsindel in Moscow" worked until 1915. In Soviet times, this enterprise became known as the "First Cotton Printing Factory". The largest textile enterprises were the Morozov manufactories. The largest Morozov enterprise is the Nikolskaya manufactory in Orekhovo-Zuevo. Well-known manufactories of that time are the factories of Albert Gubner, Mikhail Titov, the Thornton factory in St. Petersburg, Krushe and Ender, Mikhailov and Son, P. Malyutin and Sons, etc. She played an invaluable role in equipping many textile enterprises in Moscow time office of Baron Ludwig I. Knop. His main activity as a representative of the British company De Jersey was the supply to Russia of modern textile equipment from Germany, France and England. The products of Russian manufactories were exported and appreciated all over the world. In pre-revolutionary Russia, wearing a ready-made dress was considered the lot of people with limited means, the rich preferred to order clothes. Sewing at home was a long and venerable tradition in the Russian Empire and was considered an important element of women's education.
Graduates of cutting and sewing schools and needlework classes received certificates that gave them the right to work as cutters, open private schools and sewing courses. In one of these sewing workshops of the then popular Moscow fashionista Madame Voitkevich, after graduating from the school of cutting and sewing O. Saburova, a young cutter Nadya Lamanova came to work, who later became the most famous dressmaker in Tsarist Russia. Outstanding achievements in the field of fashion design made Lamanova the number one figure in the history of domestic fashion design. Nadezhda Lamanova laid the foundations for Soviet modeling. The motto of the creativity of fashion designers today is the famous formula of Lamanova - purpose, image, fabric.
In 1885, Lamanova opened her workshop in Adelheim's house on Bolshaya Dmitrovka. legendary Nadezhda Lamanova, the supplier of the Imperial Court, before the revolution, "dressed" the royal family, the aristocratic and artistic beau monde. After the revolution, she not only designed models for the wives of high-ranking officials, but also created mass fashion. She made costumes for the films of Eisenstein and Alexandrov, for many Soviet theatrical performances. Her clients were Vera Kholodnaya, Maria Ermolova, Olga Knipper-Chekhova. In her house, the great French couturier Paul Poiret arranged his fashion shows. After the revolution, Lamanova's models, who continued to work as a Soviet fashion designer, won prizes at international exhibitions, Lamanova's clothes were demonstrated - Vladimir Mayakovsky's muse Lilya Brik, her younger sister, French writer Elsa Triolet, actress Alexandra Khokhlova. Pre-revolutionary Russia boasted an abundance of fashion houses, ateliers and workshops.. Only in St. Petersburg in the 1900s there were more than 120 of them. The famous fashion house in St. Petersburg was the Brizak House, which was the Supplier of the Court and worked only for the imperial family, serving the grand duchesses and court ladies-in-waiting. By the highest order of the Empress, the House of Brizak could serve two clients who did not belong to the court - ballerinas Anna Pavlova and singer Anastasia Vyaltseva.
Another big St. Petersburg fashion house of the 1900s was Hindu house. Anna Grigorievna Hindus studied in Paris at the firm of the famous French fashion designer, Mrs. Paquin, with whom she subsequently maintained contact.

The third major fashion house was House of Olga Buldenkova, who was also a supplier to the Imperial Court. Her field of activity was special uniform dresses, regulated by the Charter of the Court, approved by a special imperial decree back in the 1830s.

In addition to large houses fashion there were more than a hundred small fashion houses and ateliers that both carried out individual orders and produced serial collections. But none of the Russian houses held fashion shows. In 1911, Paul Poiret brought his collection to St. Petersburg. And the first fashion show took place in St. Petersburg in 1916.

The new era that has come has largely changed both the costume itself and the attitude towards fashion. In the second decade of the twentieth century, after the First World War, the world saw a simplification of the costume and a transition to the mass industrial production of clothing, the beginning of which was largely associated with the well-established production of military uniforms. However, in Soviet Russia, this global trend was overlaid with the role of socialist ideology.

The clothing industry, destroyed during the October Revolution, like all other industries, began to rebuild. In 1917, the Department of ready-made dresses and underwear was created at Centrotextile "... to restore, unite and nationalize the production and distribution of ready-made dresses and underwear on a national scale." In 1919, the Central Institute of the Garment Industry and the Educational Art and Industrial Costume Workshops were established, whose tasks included the centralization of clothing production, scientific research and training, as well as the establishment of hygienic and artistic forms of clothing.
In 1920, the legendary Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops of the VKHUTEMAS were organized (since 1927 reorganized into the VKHUTEIN), which existed until 1932, and gave the Soviet country remarkable masters of industrial design, many of whom left their mark on the development of fashion. In the early years of Soviet power, the Clothing Industry Committee - Tsentroshvey was created, and in April 1920, after merging with the central department of military procurement, it was renamed the Main Committee of the Clothing Industry (Glavodezhda).
To manage enterprises, territorial trusts were organized in Moscow (the famous Moskvoshvey), Leningrad, Minsk, Baku and other cities. The machine park began to be replenished with new imported machines, electric knives, steam presses. Factories moved to a broader division of labor, and by the end of the recovery period since 1925, a gradual transition began to a flow organization of production, which dramatically increases productivity compared to individual tailoring. But, as you know, quantity is not necessarily quality and individuality.
By the 1930s, the range of clothing produced in the country had become better and more diverse. Soviet garment factories, which previously worked mainly for the army and produced overalls, instead of overcoats, riding breeches and padded jackets, began to sew women's and men's suits, light dresses, coats and short coats from various fabrics, underwear of all kinds, children's clothing. In connection with the requirements of consumers, the trust "Moskvoshvey" introduced the acceptance of individual orders.
One of the brightest periods of the new Soviet fashion were the 20s. At the art and production sub-department of the Fine Arts of the People's Commissariat for Education, "Modern Costume Workshops" were opened. It was the first creative experimental laboratory of new forms of clothing in the Soviet Republic. Nadezhda Lamanova approached Minister of Culture Lunacharsky (his wife, actress of the Maly Theater Natalia Rozenel knew Lamanova's abilities very well) with a proposal to create a modern costume workshop. Lamanova was faced with the task of creating a workers' and peasants' fashion, and she was forced to show tremendous ingenuity, using cheap, simple and crude materials, given the post-revolutionary devastation.

In 1923, the "Center for the Formation of a New Soviet Costume" was created, later renamed the "Atelier of Fashion", the official director of which was Olga Senicheva-Kashchenko. In one interview, Olga Senicheva told how in Moskvoshvei she, a sixteen-year-old girl, was given documents for a loan, and she gave an obligation to pay the costs of the Fashion Atelier within a year and a half - the repair of the premises (on Petrovka, 12, now the Art Salon) and tissues received for work. new center fashion handed over confiscated materials from warehouses whose owners had fled abroad during the revolution. Brocade, velvet and silk were at the disposal of the atelier. The beautiful fabrics stored in damp warehouses were badly damaged, so they decided to use some of them for curtains and furniture upholstery in the hall where it was planned to hold a demonstration of clothing models. First, in order to return to the state all the money given on credit, in the first Soviet "Atelier fashion" they began to create models not from chintz and linen, but from brocade and velvet for Nepmen, so that later they would be able to develop mass fashion and create clothing models for working people. The party elite, celebrities and light industry leaders were invited to the first fashion shows.

• In the experimental Fashion Atelier, together with Nadezhda Lamanova, who headed the creative work, such outstanding artists as Vera Mukhina, Alexandra Ekster, Nadezhda Makarova (Lamanova's niece), and applied art specialist Evgenia Pribylskaya worked, At the same time, one issue of the Atelier magazine was published. , in the work of which many famous artists took part.

• In 1923, at the 1st All-Russian Art and Industrial Exhibition, samples of models developed in the Atelier of Fashion by N. Lamanova, E. Pribylskaya, A. Exter, V. Mukhina were awarded prizes.

• The models of Nadezhda Lamanova and Vera Mukhina, exhibited at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1925, received the Grand Prix for national identity combined with a modern fashion trend. Each dress model was necessarily complemented by a headdress, a bag, jewelry made of twine, cord, straw, embroidered canvas, beads made of shells and pebbles.

The experimental studio failed to fulfill its main mission of creating samples of clothing for mass production, as well as fulfilling individual orders for the people, as it existed for only a few years. One of the largest state orders in 1923 was the development of dress uniforms for the Red Army. In order to earn money, the atelier operated as an expensive tailor-made workshop, aimed at actresses, for whom special discounts were provided, and wealthy people. Ten designers and ten artists worked on the creation of models. Models were sewn by one hundred and fifty workers of the 26th factory of the Moskvoshvey trust. On average, one dress was sewn for twenty days, and only the work of the masters cost one hundred rubles for each model. It was so expensive that even two years after opening, many dresses were still not sold out.

In 1923, the first Soviet domestic fashion magazine"Atelier", created under the innovative "Atelier Mode". The editorial outlined the main goals and objectives: "An active and tireless striving to identify everything that is creatively beautiful, what deserves the most attention in the field of material culture." The grandiosity of the idea was determined only by the list of star names who agreed to cooperate in the magazine. Among the celebrities are artists Yuri Annenkov, Boris Kustodiev, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Alexander Golovin, Konstantin Somov, Igor Grabar, sculptor Vera Mukhina, poet Anna Akhmatova, art historian Nikolai Punin and many others. The magazine was illustrated with inserts of color drawings.

The names of artists began to appear on the pages fashion magazines back in the 1900s and 1910s, when the art of fashion illustration was in its heyday. In 1908, an art book began to appear in Moscow. fashion magazine, handicrafts, farm "Parizhanka" with the frontispiece of the artist Mstislav Dobuzhinsky. The cover of the new edition was specially ordered from Konstantin Somov, however, for technical reasons, the magazine began to appear in the new cover only from 1909. The cover for Dendy men's fashion magazine was made by Victor Zamirailo, and the drawings of the models placed in it were created by famous St. Petersburg graphic artists Alexander Depaldo and Alexander Arnshtam. The artist Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva also suggested publishing the Ladies' Journal. In 1915, the famous St. Petersburg dressmaker Anna Gindus tried to implement such plans. At the same time, the architect Ivan Fomin also started to publish a magazine of beautiful life, called "Mirror". These plans, and even then only in part, were destined to be realized only in the 1920s.

First Soviet fashion magazine was supposed to pay close attention to "the detailed development of questions about the new women's costume", as well as reflect "the entire diverse creative work of Atelier Mod", and, in addition, acquaint readers with news in the field of art, theater and sports.

The magazine published an article by the artist Alexandra Ekster "On constructive clothing", reflecting the main direction in the development of modeling at that time - simplicity and functionality. “When choosing a form of clothing,” the author wrote, “one should take into account the natural proportions of the figure; with the right design of clothing, you can achieve its conformity to the shapes and sizes of the body. Work clothes should allow freedom of movement, so they cannot be tight. One of the main requirements for such a suit is ease of use. Exter paid special attention to the selection of fabrics, suggesting that when designing one or another form of costume, proceed from the plastic properties of the material. So, in her opinion, vertical folds are inappropriate when creating models from coarse wool, and soft wool of large width, on the contrary, will allow creating a complex voluminous silhouette. Exter designed a complex multi-functional kit reminiscent of a Japanese kimono, using various materials in contrasting colors. Another set for the house and the street consisted of an upper and lower shirt-cut dress with side slits, trimmed with appliqué. The cover of Atelier magazine was decorated with a sketch created by Alexandra Ekster, an elongated silhouette of a model in a cape for the street made of light blue taffeta silk, without seams, with an oversized collar. A small tight-fitting hat with a pompom is put on her head.

The famous sketch of Vera Mukhina's bud dress was placed in the first issue of the Atelier. The famous sculptor was featured here as a fashion designer. The dress she proposed was classified as "variety". The lush draperies of the white fabric skirt resembled the petals of a flower. An elegant female silhouette in a wide-brimmed red hat, with a cane in her hand, was a reminiscence of the Rococo, combined with Suprematist motifs.

On the pages of the first issue of Atelier, a large number of photographs of Moscow actresses and models in luxurious toilets, not inferior to French outfits, were placed. The photographs in the magazine show that the collection of 1922-1923, despite the difficulties of the economic order, was made of expensive fabrics. Literary and journalistic reflections on modern fashion the director and playwright Nikolai Evreinov (“The Look of a Parisian Woman 1923”), the Russian philanthropist, Vladimir von Meck, who after the revolution worked on creating sketches of scenery and costumes at the Maly Theater, (“Costume and Revolution”), M. Yuryevskaya (“ On the influence of dance on fashion).

As an addition to Yuryevskaya's article, the Atelier artists proposed a model of a "variety dress for eccentric dances" made of black velvet and taffeta with a long train ("tail"). The waist is intercepted by a wide belt of orange fur, on the shoulder there is an orange interception ribbon to match the fur, a headdress of black silk with standing peacock feathers.

The Atelier magazine was published with a circulation of 2000 copies and was a great success. As editor-in-chief Olga Senicheva wrote: “Readers missed the artistic, beautifully designed publications. Coated paper, good printing, color illustrations and, perhaps, the most important thing: an unusual topic for that time - fashion- attracted many, and the circulation quickly sold out. Of great interest was the fact that at the end of the issue was given a "Review of fashion trends from foreign magazines." However, the first number fashion magazine turned out to be the last. In the magazine "Shveinik" there was a note "How not to be an artist", in which all the activities of the "Atelier" were subjected to the most severe criticism. In 1925, economic difficulties were added to the ideological accusations, and the first Soviet fashion house underwent major changes. A new director was appointed, the staff was reduced, and the famous Moscow Fashion Atelier turned into an ordinary nomenklatura fashion workshop that sheathed party wives and celebrities.

The idea of ​​a fashion magazine with the participation of artists and writers, and the involvement of painters and graphic artists in the development of clothing models, was realized for some time. Fashion publications that appeared in the era of the New Economic Policy called on the masters of the brush and pen to speak out on the formation of modern fashion.

In 1928 he began to publish fashion magazine "The Art of Dressing" , the new edition was not only fashionable, but also "cultural and educational" with a number of interesting headings: "Paris Letters" - (messages from a correspondent from Paris about fashion trends), "Curiosities of fashion", "Costume Past". There was a “Helpful Tips” section in the magazine, where you could find out: “How to clean kid gloves”, “How to wash thin lace”, “How to renew black lace and veils”, etc., in addition, articles by leading fashion designers, hygienists, product advertising. In the magazine one could see new developments of clothing designers M. Orlova, N. Orshanskaya, O. Anisimova, E. Yakunina. The first issue of the fashion magazine opened with Lunacharsky's article "Is It Timely for a Worker to Think About the Art of Dressing?" Ordinary citizens were also involved in the discussion and could express their views. “Our proletarian artists, with the help of the masses, need to start creating new fashions, “their own”, and not “Parisian”. Party and Komsomol meetings will help them in this, ”comrade Muscovite claimed. Yukhanov in his letter to Komsomolskaya Pravda. In the same year, 1928, the “Home dressmaker” appears - a traditional fashion magazine with drawings of clothing models and explanations for them, patterns and tips for dressmakers. Both magazines were published on good large-format paper, with color printing and patterns.

• In 1929, a new magazine, The Garment Industry, was published, which wrote about the problems of mass industrial production of clothing. The stage of industrialization of the country began. In the same years, sewing technical schools, schools of trade and educational institutions, sewing faculties at textile enterprises were opened, which trained specialists for the light industry.

• In addition, in the 1920s, Fashion Magazine, Fashion of the Season, Fashion World, Fashion, Season Models, Four Seasons, Fashion Bulletin, Women's Magazine, etc. appeared. some fashion magazines was short, and they were closed for "lack of ideas", and some existed for many years.

In 1932, the Soviet publishing house "Gizlegprom" was opened under the People's Commissariat of Light Industry of the USSR, publishing literature on light, textile and local industry and public services, publishing magazines with fashion models. Many garment factories in the 30s began to publish their own fashion magazines. Clothing models were published in women's magazines such as "Worker", "Peasant Woman", etc.

One of the main, for the Soviet design of the 20-30s, was the theme of "production suit". It was at this time that such a thing as overalls (industrial clothing) appeared. Artists of the 1920s offered various options for production suits for surgeons, pilots, firefighters, builders, and salesmen. The founder of the Soviet poster, the Latvian artist Gustav Klutsis, designed a miner's suit with a lamp on the helmet and a signal belt, where there was a complex keyboard of buttons. Clothing became, as it were, a microenvironment of a person. The raw materials for the first models of the Soviet costume were all the same - canvas, linen, coarse calico, chintz, cloth, flannelette, fumes, coarse wool.
Own costume theory, excluding any fashion, tried to develop the masters and ideologists of the Moscow INHUK: Varvara Stepanova, Boris Arvatov, Alexander Rodchenko, Alexei Gan and others. , sculptors, architects, art critics, organized in Moscow in March 1920 under the Department of Fine Arts of the People's Commissariat of Education, was a kind of discussion club and theoretical center.
The first Soviet fashion designers, including Nadezhda Lamanova, and avant-garde artists working in such areas as constructivism and suprematism - Alexander Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova, Alexandra Ekster, Viktor Tatlin, Kazemir Malevich - were engaged in the development of overalls for various types of industries. They saw the main task in "creating clothing forms that are not built on the traditions of fashion." Fashion was to be replaced by simplicity, convenience, hygiene and "socio-technical expediency."
New artistic ideas at this time began to easily and organically penetrate the world of fashion. The bright and strange futuristic costume found its fans among the youth; "Suprematist" ornaments on sweaters and scarves, which were knitted by the mother of the artist Kazemir Malevich, were in demand, as well as sketches of Lamanova's drawings for fashionable silk toilets in the style of cubism or Suprematism. The main method of designing functional clothing was to reveal the structure: exposing the design of the cut, the design of fasteners, pockets. The professional affiliation of the costume was revealed through its design and specific technical devices. The suit became a professional tool in the work. Innovative artists deliberately refused to use decorative ornaments, believing that the technology of mass production of clothing itself had undiscovered artistic possibilities.
Textile artists, along with the preservation of traditional floral patterns, create new patterns. The remarkable constructivist designer Varvara Stepanova was actively engaged in the development of patterns for fabrics and the modeling of a new type of clothing - for citizens of a socialist state. In 1923-1924, together with another bright and talented avant-garde artist, Lyubov Popova, she worked at the First Moscow Calico Factory, where her fabric models were repeatedly produced. Stepanova dreamed of creating fabrics with new physical properties, based on the patterns of interweaving of threads, organically combined with graphic ornament. She studied consumer demand for fabrics and clothing, emphasizing that in the USSR, for the first time in world history, social differences in costume were eliminated, and she believed that modernity urgently requires a new concept of clothing for workers - mass, but at the same time, diverse.

In the 1920s, there were many discussions about the reorganization of the life of a Soviet person. In 1928, polemical articles on this topic regularly appeared on the pages of newspapers. It was discussed what kind of houses and apartments workers need, what furniture should be, how the interior of a Soviet person should be decorated, whether there is an alternative to lace napkins, porcelain figurines, elephants and other attributes of petty-bourgeois life. A large place in this discussion was occupied by the question, what should be the costume of a Komsomol member and a communist? The problem of the formation of the style of the Soviet fashion was one of the central For example, in Komsomolskaya Pravda one could read the following arguments on the topic: “there is a pronounced need to oppose some of our own, Soviet,“ Komsomol ”fashion to the samples of“ the best clothes ”from the shops on Petrovka and Kuznetsky Most.” The theatrical world was also involved in controversy, on the stages of theaters one could see experimental projects of everyday and work clothes, furniture, and a rationally equipped dwelling of a Soviet person.

Soon, due to constant criticism of artists who are not engaged in their own business, their gradual removal from the art of costume began. The Moscow House of Models, which opened in 1934, finally made the artistic design of a costume a completely independent activity. A new generation of artists appeared, for whom the creation of fashionable clothes became a profession. The period of the beautiful utopia of the formation of a new way of life is over, the art of costume has passed from idyllic artists into the practical hands of fashion designers.

In the era of war communism, when literally the whole word “overalls” was in short supply, it meant not only comfortable clothes for professional needs. Under the "overalls" was also understood a part of the so-called payment in kind, half of which was given out in food, and half in things. It was impossible to satisfy the need for shoes and clothes for everyone, which is why serious conflicts broke out in society. For example, in Petrograd at the end of the winter of 1921, in many factories and factories, not only employees, but also persons under 18 years of age were excluded from the lists of applicants for overalls. Because of this, "bagpipes" began to emerge - special forms of strikes. To resolve the conflict, the needy were given one sheet, one towel and one pair of shoes, designed for three. Overalls were distributed according to the principle of "class rations". The workers and the party-Soviet nomenklatura were considered a privileged class. In the diaries of contemporaries one could read such entries: “Our brother cannot even think about a new couple. Shoes are distributed only to communists and sailors.
At one of the Chelyabinsk mines in 1922, the administration, issued to the miners, exchanged boots for bast shoes. The administration workers themselves dressed up in boots. Olga Senicheva recalled what clothes she wore to work at the Fashion Atelier, she was wearing cloth shoes with rope soles and a thin coat made of homespun canvas, which she received as a gift as a participant in the III Congress of the Comintern, where she arranged an exhibition of general and handicraft industry for delegates. The writer Vera Ketlinskaya recalled: “In everyday life, I had one skirt and two flannel blouses - you wash, iron and put on in turn, both at the institute, and at a party, and at home and at the theater.” Nadezhda Mandelstam, writer, wife of the poet Osip Mandelstam wrote: “Women, married women and secretaries, we all raved about stockings.” The rationing of clothing continued until the autumn of 1922, so that the word "overalls" acquired its true meaning only from 1923.
The introduction of the New Economic Policy provided residents of Soviet cities with a unique opportunity to legally buy clothes for the first time since 1917. NEP - the new economic policy that existed in the Soviet country from 1922 to 1929, was aimed at restoring the national economy and the subsequent transition to socialism. For a time, private property again came into its own. True, the economy and the purchasing power of the population grew very slowly, and many workers wore tattered civil war uniforms.
With the adoption of the NEP program, life in Soviet Russia changed. In a country devastated by revolution and war, after widespread famine, devastation, and a shortage of everything, abundance suddenly reigned. Shop counters, the shelves of which were empty until recently, began to break. Every resident of the capital or large city could stare at the suddenly announced variety of goods, but few could buy them. So the prospects for the NEP were not the most rosy. Devastation, unemployment, poverty, homelessness still reigned in the country.
In NEP Russia, magazines appeared that advertised a beautiful life and fashionable clothes, shops with beautiful things. In Moscow, you could buy literally everything. Many goods ended up on the shelves from pawnshops, where people carried their goods, often the remains of family jewels. People really wanted to buy not only food, but also new fashionable clothes. Soviet citizens are tired of "war communism". In NEP Russia, fashion fetishes of the mid-20s became attributes of a beautiful life - a Marengo suit, a Boston suit, felt boots, carpet and Cheviot coats, seal coats, astrakhan sake, squirrel coats, stockings with an arrow, perfumes "Ubigan" and "Lerigan" de coti” and other luxuries.
Private entrepreneurs - Nepmen began to import clothes from Europe to Russia. The Nepmen themselves and the families of medium and high-ranking functionaries, as well as famous people favored by the Soviet government, dressed in expensive fashionable imported clothes. Those who could not afford the benefits of the new economic policy provided themselves with fashionable clothes by needlework, altering old dresses, recutting bought cheap things, constructing fashion models from fabrics that they managed to "get", turning to patterns in fashion magazines.

• In NEP Moscow, a large number of tailor's workshops appeared. The most famous were Maison de Luxe on Petrovka, San Rival on Pokrovka, the house of the workshop of the sisters E.V. and G.V. Kolmogorov, the workshop of A. Tushnov's Plisse, the atelier of Grishchenko, Koppar, Nefedova, Dellos.

• In the 1920s, the ARS embroidery school began its work in Moscow, the owner of which was Varvara Karinskaya. Soon Karinskaya opened the first Houte Couture salon for the Moscow elite, in which they ordered the toilets of the wives of the communist "top" and NEPmen. In addition, wealthy women of fashion went to the antique salon, which was run by the stepdaughter of Varvara Karinskaya, Tatyana, for jewelry. In 1928, Karinskaya emigrated to Germany.

Clothing manufacturers, tailors, shoemakers, hat makers, have become the informal elite of Soviet society during the NEP. In Soviet Russia, studios began to appear in which high-class masters worked, accessible only to members of the government and party leaders. Kremlin ladies began to use the services of tailors and fashion designers in the most active way. Especially among them in the mid-20s, toilets “from Lamanova” were considered the highest chic.

The twenties in the new Soviet country, an amazing time, combining the avant-garde ideas of constructivism, the clothes of ordinary workers - red scarves, long shapeless skirts, cloth shoes with a membrane, and the outfits of ladies who use the benefits of the NEP with might and main and dress in the manner of European flappers. The first shock five-year plans were already beginning, and the spirit of the Charleston was still in the air.

Of course, in the Soviet country there was always a territorial uneven distribution fashion. The concentration of the Soviet fashion industry was concentrated in the capital. The gap between the capital and the provinces was huge. In the field of fashion, Moscow and the provinces were related as "reference" and "imitative" cultures. And if in large cities it was still possible to buy, or, as the people said, “get” good things or use the services of an atelier, then for the inhabitants of the village the concept of “ fashion' simply didn't exist. Therefore, speaking about the fashion of a young Soviet country, one has to describe the clothes that the inhabitants of, first of all, Moscow and large cities wore.

In the era of the New Economic Policy, Soviet women of fashion imitated the movie stars of silent films, considering them standards of beauty and taste. Among them are Olga Zhizneva, Veronika Buzhinskaya, Vera Malinovskaya, Anel Sudakevich, Anna Sten, Alexandra Khokhlova, Yulia Solntseva, Nina Shaternikova, Sofia Magarill, Sofia Yakovleva, Galina Kravchenko and others. The success of these actresses did not go beyond the borders of Soviet Russia, but often in their image and make-up they copied Western movie stars.

Fashionistas of the 20s had the same ideals as emancipated women all over the world - a thin figure that allows you to wear knee-length dresses with a low waist, however, among Soviet ladies, this dream did not always come true, and in fashion dresses had to be dressed in rather well-fed forms. Artificial flowers, strings of pearls - real or fake, wrapped around the neck, lace-up high boots, fox or arctic fox fur boas, astrakhan jackets are in fashion. An important accessory of fashionistas of that time was hats, which in the first post-revolutionary years were criticized as a clear sign of bourgeoisness, and were actively replaced by red scarves.

In men's attire, shimmy or jimmy boots and oxford trousers were fashionable chic - short, ankle-length and narrow. In the mid-20s, these things are relatively affordable. So the poet Daniil Kharms wrote in his diary in September 1926: “I bought Jim boots in Gostiny Dvor, Neva side, store 28.” Gaiters (suede or linen white covers worn on men's shoes), jackets, breeches, leggings (a special kind of soft men's boots) are popular.

If at the beginning of the 20s it was necessary to observe the signs of Bolshevism and wear a blouse or sweatshirt, as well as a cap, cap and boots, then by the end of the 20s, thanks to the NEP, it began to revive fashion for European style clothes. Beaver jackets, outerwear made of heavy and dense fabrics - gabardine, chesuchi, carpet coat, cheviot, etc. appeared in the men's wardrobe. Men's leather boots with blunt toes - "bulldogs" were considered luxury. Very common clothing in the 20s and early 30s were men's linen trousers and white canvas shoes, which were cleaned with toothpowder, as well as striped T-shirts, worn by both men and women. Knitwear was also widely used in the men's wardrobe - sweaters, vests, scarves, etc.

Since not everyone had access to the services of tailoring masters, high-quality fabrics or good finished products, fashionable toilets had to be invented from improvised means. In the memoirs of the writer Nadezhda Teffi, one can read about women's enterprise - curtains and curtains, sheets and other bed and table linen, tablecloths and bedspreads were used. The striped mattress teak was very popular, as well as any other fabrics used in household use. Cheap furs were very popular - rabbit, cygkey. Dyed rabbit was the most common fur of that time.

True, fur was quickly declared a sign of bourgeoisness. A simple worker was not supposed to chase scarce furs, but to walk in winter in a quilted coat with wadding. There were big problems with shoes, because it was impossible to sew them at home like a dress or a blouse, and those who couldn’t afford private stores exchanged shoes at clothing markets or wore the old one until completely crumbling, felt boots helped out many in winter.
During the years of the Civil War and the NEP, the main "flea markets" of the country were the Tishinsky and Sukharevsky markets, where for relatively little money or by exchanging goods for goods, one could put on shoes and dress up. Tishinsky market was a favorite trading place for Muscovites until the 1990s, but Sukharevsky was closed back in the late 20s.
The main thing for an ordinary Soviet worker of the late 20s - early 30s was a certain average standard, you had to look like everyone else, be like everyone else, not stand out in anything. In a country where the word collective sounded everywhere, individuality was not welcomed. The crowd looked rather monotonous.

To be continued ( The history of Soviet fashion - part two 30s )

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10:10 07/04/2012

The development of fashion in the 1910s of the XX century was largely determined by global events, the main of which was the First World War of 1914-1918. The changed living conditions and worries that ended up on women's shoulders demanded, first of all, convenience and comfort in clothes. The financial crisis associated with the war also did not contribute to the popularity of luxurious dresses made from expensive fabrics. However, as is often the case, difficult times created an even greater demand for beautiful clothes: women, not wanting to put up with circumstances, showed miracles of ingenuity in search of fabrics and new styles. As a result, the second decade of the 20th century was remembered for models that combined elegance and convenience, and the appearance of the legendary star Coco Chanel in the fashion sky.

At the beginning of the second decade of the twentieth century, Paul Poiret remained the main dictator in the fashion world. In 1911, women's trousers and culottes made a splash. The fashion designer continued to popularize his work through social events and various trips. Poiret celebrated the creation of the Thousand and One Nights collection with a luxurious reception, and later in the same 1911 he opened his own school of arts and crafts, Ecole Martin. Also, the fashion revolutionary continued to publish books and catalogs with his products. Then Poiret went on a world tour, which lasted until 1913. During this time, the artist has shown his models in London, Vienna, Brussels, Berlin, Moscow, St. Petersburg and New York. All his shows and trips were accompanied by articles and photographs in newspapers, so that the news about the French couturier spread all over the world.

Poiret was not afraid of experiments and became the first fashion designer to create his own fragrance - Rosina perfume, named after his eldest daughter. In 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War, the House of Paul Poiret ceased its activities, and the artist made an attempt to return to the world of fashion only in 1921.

This, however, turned out to be a failure, largely due to the fact that the luxurious and exotic style of Poiret was supplanted by the revolutionary models of Coco Chanel.

Emancipation and the first practical models

The first step in the transition to "comfortable" fashion was the final disappearance of corsets, voluminous hats, and "limping" skirts from women's wardrobes. In the early 1910s, new models came into use, the main among them was the "yule skirt" with a high waist, wide hips, drapery and narrow at the ankles. As for the length, until 1915 the hem of the dresses reached the ground. Skirts, on the other hand, were shortened a little: models came into fashion that reached “only” up to the leg lift. Dresses were often worn with capes, and dresses with a train were also popular. A V-shaped neckline was common, not only on the chest, but also on the back.

The craving for practicality touched not only clothing, but the entire female image. In the second decade of the twentieth century, ladies for the first time stopped doing intricate elegant hairstyles and opened their necks. Short haircuts have not yet become as common as they were in the 1920s, but the fashion for long, beautifully styled hair on the head has become a thing of the past.

At that time, operetta was extremely popular throughout Europe, and the dancers who performed on stage became an example to follow, including in terms of clothing. Along with the operetta, the audience enjoyed the cabaret, and especially the tango dance. Especially for the tango, a stage costume was invented - Turkish harem pants, as well as draped skirts, in the cuts of which the dancers' legs were visible. Such outfits were used only on stage, but in 1911 the Parisian fashion house "Drecol and Beschof" offered the ladies the so-called trouser dresses and a skirt-pants. The conservative part of French society did not accept the new outfits, and those girls who dared to appear in them in public were accused of denying generally accepted moral standards. Women's trousers, which first appeared in the early 1910s, were negatively received by the public and became popular only much later.

In 1913, emancipant women began to protest in Europe against movement-restricting clothing, insisting on the appearance of simple cut and comfortable models. At the same time, there was still a slight but tangible influence of sports on everyday fashion. Abundant stripes and decorations, intricate appliqués and details that adorned clothes began to disappear. Women allowed themselves to bare their arms and legs. In general, the cut of clothes has become much more free, shirts and dress shirts have come into fashion.

All these trends were characteristic of casual wear, while dressy models were still kept in the style of the 1910s. High-waisted dresses with elements of oriental style, models with a narrow bodice and wide skirt with frills were still popular in the world. A pannier skirt came into fashion, the name of which is translated from French as "basket". The model was distinguished by a barrel-shaped silhouette - the hips were wide, but the front and back of the skirt was flat. In short, the outfits for going out were more elegant and conservative, and some fashion designers sought to keep the trends observed in the fashion of the 1900s. Erte became the most notable among the artists who adhered to conservative models.

Loud debut of the great Erte

The most popular fashion designer Erte, whose name is associated with luxurious and feminine images of the second decade of the twentieth century, did not recognize the trend towards practicality and functionality.

© provided by the Internet agency "Bi-group"

Sketch of a dress by fashion designer Erte (Roman Petrovich Tyrtov)

Roman Petrovich Tyrtov was born in 1892 in St. Petersburg, and at the age of twenty he moved to Paris. Erte took the pseudonym from the initial letters of the name and surname. Even as a child, the boy showed a penchant for drawing and design. From the age of 14, he attended classes at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, and after moving to the French capital, he went to work at the Paul Poiret House. His high-profile debut in Paris was the creation of costumes for the play "The Minaret" in 1913. The very next year, when Erte left the House of Poiret, his models were very popular not only in France, but also in the theater troupes of Monte Carlo, New York, Chicago and Glyndbourne. Music halls filled the talented fashion designer with orders, and Erte created costumes for productions such as Irwin Berlin's Music Box Repertoire, George White's Scandals and Mary of Manhattan. Each image created by the couturier was his own creation: in his work, Erte never relied on the experience of his colleagues and predecessors.

The most recognizable image created by the fashion designer was the mysterious beauty, wrapped in luxurious furs, with many accessories, the main of which were long strands of pearls and beads, topped with an original headdress. Erte created his outfits, inspired by ancient Egyptian and Greek mythology, as well as Indian miniatures and, of course, Russian classical art. Denying a slim silhouette and abstract geometric patterns, Erte became the chief artist of the Harpers Bazaar magazine in 1916, a contract with which he was offered by magnate William Hirst.

© RIA Novosti Sergey Subbotin

Cover of the magazine "Women's business"

Popular even before the outbreak of the First World War, Erte was one of the trendsetters until his death in 1990 at the age of 97.

War and fashion

The dispute between adherents of the old style and supporters of practical clothing was decided by the First World War that began in 1914. Women, forced to do all the male work, simply could not afford to dress up in long puffy skirts and corsets.

During this period, functional details began to appear in clothing, referring to the military style - patch pockets, turn-down collars, jackets with lacing, lapels and metal buttons that girls wore with skirts. At the same time, women's suits came into fashion. The hard years brought with them another reform: comfortable knitwear was used in tailoring, from which jumpers, cardigans, scarves and hats were created. Casual dresses, the length of which became shorter and reached only to the calves, were worn with high, coarse lace-up boots, under which women wore leggings.

In general, this time can be described as a spontaneous search for new forms and styles, a passionate desire to get away from all the fashionable standards that were imposed by fashion houses in the 1900s. Trends literally replaced one another. Common to the wartime silhouettes was the freedom of cut, sometimes even the "saggy" clothes. Now the outfits did not emphasize all the curves of the female figure, but, on the contrary, hid it. Even the belts no longer fitted the waist, not to mention the sleeves, blouses and skirts.

The war, perhaps, made women much more independent than all the emancipant outbursts that characterized the early 1910s. First, women took over the work that men used to do: they took places in factories, hospitals and offices. In addition, many of them ended up in auxiliary military services, where working conditions dictated practicality as the main criterion when choosing clothes. The girls wore uniforms, khaki sports shirts and caps. Perhaps, for the first time, women felt their independence and significance, became confident in their strengths and intellectual abilities. All this allowed the ladies themselves to direct the development of fashion.

© Illustration from the book "Icons of Style. The History of Fashion of the 20th Century. Edited by G. Buxbaum. St. Petersburg. "Amphora", 2009"

Dartey "Military crinoline", drawing 1916.

During the war, when almost all fashion houses were closed, women voluntarily got rid of all imposed canons, freeing clothes from unnecessary details. The practical and functional style took root and fell in love so much that the fashion houses that resumed their activities after the war were forced to follow new trends, and attempts to regain popularity of the previously relevant crinoline and uncomfortable "narrow" styles ended in failure.

Of particular note, however, appeared at the same time and became extremely popular "military crinolines". These fluffy skirts differed from their predecessors in that they used not the usual hoops, but a large number of petticoats to maintain their shape. It took a lot of fabric to sew such outfits and, despite the low quality, the price of "military crinolines" was quite high. This did not prevent the voluminous skirt from becoming one of the main hits of the war, and later this model became a symbol of the romantic style caused by general protest and war weariness. Unable to resist the mastered practical style, fashion designers decided to bring originality and beauty to simple-style outfits through details and finishes. Dresses "haute couture" were richly decorated with pearls, ribbons, appliqués and beads.

The impact of the First World War on fashion cannot be described only by the emerging trend towards practicality. Soldiers who participated in battles in foreign territories brought home as trophies, including new exotic fabrics, as well as hitherto unseen shawls, scarves and jewelry from Tunisia and Morocco. Fashion designers, getting acquainted with the cultures of different countries, absorbed ideas and embodied new styles, patterns and finishes in tailoring.

After the end of the war, when secular life improved, and balls began to be given in Paris again, many women abandoned the costumes that had become familiar and returned to pre-war fashion. However, this period did not last long - after the war, a completely new stage in fashion began, which at that time was most influenced by Coco Chanel.

Men's style from Chanel

Coco Chanel

Coco Chanel, by her own admission, tried all her life to adapt a men's suit to the needs and lifestyle of a modern woman.

Coco Chanel began her journey in the fashion world in 1909 when she opened her own hat shop in Paris. The rumor about the new designer quickly spread throughout the French capital, and the very next year, Coco was able to launch not only hats, but also clothes, opening a store at 21 Rue Cambon, and then her own Fashion House in the Biarritz resort. Despite the high cost of clothing and the simplicity of the cut, which was unusual for that time, Chanel's models were rapidly gaining popularity, and the designer had a wide clientele.

The main task of the clothes that fashion designers previously offered to women was to emphasize the wasp waist and highlight the chest, creating unnatural curves. Coco Chanel was thin, tanned and athletic, and the style common at that time did not suit her perfectly - with all the desire, no clothes could make an "hourglass" out of a girl's figure. But she was the perfect model for her own outfits. "Cuffed in a corset, chest out, butt exposed, so tight at the waist, as if cut into two parts ... to contain such a woman is the same as managing real estate," Koko said.

Promoting convenience and unisex style, the fashion designer created very simple dresses and skirts, distinguished by clear lines and the absence of jewelry. The girl, without hesitation, swept aside unnecessary details and unnecessary accessories in search of the ideal model that does not restrict movement, and at the same time allows a woman to remain a woman. Regardless of public opinion, she deftly introduced elements of masculine style into women's clothing, independently setting an example of the correct use of simple outfits. "Once I put on a men's sweater, just like that, because I felt cold ... I tied it with a scarf (at the waist). That day I was with the British. None of them noticed that I was wearing a sweater ..." Chanel recalled. That is how her famous plunging-neck sailor suits with turn-down collars and "jockey" leather jackets appeared.

When creating clothes, Chanel used simple materials - cotton, knitwear. In 1914, she shortened the women's skirt. At the start of World War I, Coco designed practical sweaters, blazers, shirt dresses, blouses, and suits. It was Chanel who contributed to the popularization of pajamas, and in 1918 even created women's pajamas, in which you could go down to the bomb shelter.

Closer to 1920, Coco, like many artists of that time, became interested in Russian motifs. This line in the work of Chanel was developed already at the beginning of the third decade of the twentieth century.

The second decade of the twentieth century, despite all the hardships and hardships, became a turning point in the evolution of fashion - it was in the 1910s that artists began to actively search for new forms that could give women freedom without depriving them of grace. The reforms brought into fashion by the war and the trends of the post-war years became decisive in the development of the industry in the following decades.

Fashion dictates not only our wardrobe, it proclaims ideals, whether it is admiring the forms or the fashion for gothic morbidity. The fashion for clothes comes from the fashion for the body. Emphasized detached tenderness, as from the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites, aristocratic white skin, feminine curls, flowing dresses to the floor. Charleston dresses fit perfectly on a flat boyish figure. Heavy masculine skin crosses out tenderness and focuses on a strong woman with an even majestic figure. Fashion directly tells us what to wear, along the way whispering in our ears how to wear it, what kind of posture to observe at the same time, what look will accompany us when leaving the hairdresser, where, undoubtedly, we did with our hair what Madame Fashion told us. Women's beauty is a mirror of history.

Antiquity

The culture of Greek antiquity deified the shape of the body, extolling everything connected with it: the Olympic Games bewitching with the beauty of the forms of athletes, public speeches, which included the ability to show with gestures the meaning of speech for those who are in the back rows and do not hear the speaker, gymnastics is in front of passers-by, well, Of course, one should not forget about sculpture, which was the highest art among the Greeks.

The situation was completely opposite in the East, where the body was just a temporary shell of an immortal spirit. The highest value is thoughts, writings.

Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and modern times, our modernity is a series of ups and downs of spirituality and the cult of the body.

1900s fashion

The interpretation and image of the female body has changed from decade to decade, from year to year. Until the First World War, the woman retained the mystery and the female body as such, that is, female nudity was not in vogue. In the 1900s, the fashion for the female silhouette began its transformation, first subjected to a very strong influence of the Art Nouveau style, which identified a woman with an unearthly being. The new silhouette changed fashion to gothic with a protruding belly and a back curved back. The fashion for such a silhouette was associated with the popularity of the look of a pregnant woman in the era of the Crusades and the absence of men. The new S-shaped silhouette was the complete opposite of its predecessor, and was caused primarily by the structure of the linen characteristic of that time and the especially curved shape of the corset that lifted the chest and placed emphasis on a narrow waist, which in extreme cases reached up to 37 centimeters.

In 1906, during the Edwardian era, the fashion for the female silhouette absorbed the tastes of the English aristocracy of those years, acquiring a more straightened neoclassical silhouette. More respectable in relation to French Art Nouveau and more straightforward, even the black and white and striped colors of the outfits emphasized their elongation and geometricity.

1910s fashion

Since 1909, there has been a wave of interest in the harem theme, generated by the success of S.P. Diaghilev in Paris. Fashion abandoned corsets and drew attention to phlegmatic half-naked round women reclining on ottomans. The object of adoration was full forms with plump, well-fed arms and legs. Paul Poiret, the famous "emperor of fashion", was the first to pick up this fashion trend and introduced corsetless dresses, the first bloomers-knickers and transparent dresses. This was the first fashion for the body as such in the twentieth century.

During the First World War, women took over men's functions, which caused the emancipation of women's fashion. Labor activity straightened the silhouette, moved the fastener forward from the back, cut the hair, making combing easier. Due to the absence of men, the fashion for the female body was dissolved in a military fog.

In those days, a new type of woman was born - a vamp woman, in the slang of those times this type of women was called "Vampire", which was a synonym for an insidious seductress, which emphasized a hard look, thickly summed up with black shadows. The first such vamp was the movie star Theda Bara.

Fashion of the 20s

In 1918, when the war brought back the thinned ranks of men from the front, the competition between women increased so much that the display of the body permeated the entire fashion of that time. The era of the 1920s gave birth to a new art deco style, a kind of fusion of neoclassicism and modernity. A new image of a woman was born, with a completely new attitude to the body and its forms - the image of a half-boy woman, a teenager. With the light filing of the famous scandalous novel by V. Marguerite "La Garcon" (which means "boy" in French), women's fashion has acquired boyish forms - the absence of breasts, hips, a wide flat waist. If the 1900s forced women to eat a variety of drugs to increase the bust, visit massage therapists, then the 1920s chained women in special flat bodices that hide their breasts.

Through the efforts of Poiret, women took off their corsets, and thanks to the simple forms of Coco Chanel's suits and dresses, they were completely forgotten. That part of the body that until recently has not been shown at all has come into fashion - the back. Women have been wearing corsets since the beginning of the 14th century and, having lost it, they decided that now their backs should be shown as often as possible. The only fact that prevented a new fashion trend was pallor. The first mixed beaches appeared, where women first opened themselves to the sun, then to appear before society in evening dresses with an open back and bare arms. The fashion for gothic pallor was replaced by a fashion for tan.

Arrest girls in Chicagofor wearing a swimsuit in a public place

The elongated silhouette of dresses with a low waistline dominated until 1924. Emboldened, showing their backs and arms, the women decided to toughen the fight for the attention of men by showing their legs. In 1924 and 1925, the fashion houses of Chanel and Jean Patou dressed women in cropped, knee-length skirts. Ladies began to show off their calves and ankles and this led to the birth of body stockings. Women's fashion more and more revealed the body, she was helped in this by popular dances to jazz music (for example, the Charleston).

Fashion of the 30s

But in 1929, the Great Depression ended the enjoyment of luxury. Quite different values ​​replaced the courage of the 20s with a cocaine drive on Rolls-Royce and dances in sparkles. Fashion adopted the streamlined silhouette of the neoclassical beauty with the forms of the Venus de Milo. Parisian fashion houses such as Elsa Schiaparelli, Madeleine Vionnet complemented the femininity of the fashionable silhouette with antique-style draperies.

40s fashion

In 1935, under the influence of European totalitarianism, elongated dresses were replaced by strict forms of jackets, suits and coats. Feminine fashion wrapped itself in the square masculinity of the first padded shoulders, hid forms under frame clothes. This direction of women's fashion reached its peak in 1943, during the Second World War, when the size of the shoulders became simply incredible. Martial law has turned women into fighters.

50s fashion

Undermined military fashion legendary "New look" from Dior in 1947. Bringing back Victorian fashion, Dior cinched the women's waists into corsets, rounded the hips, and took out padded coat hangers from war-weary ladies. Fashion has regained mystery, femininity and sophistication.

Fashion 60s

In the 1960s, under the famous "Beatles" and "The Rolling Stones", they opened a fashion for young people that simply did not exist before. Women's fashion has regained the boyish silhouette of the 20s, which has become a popular model Twiggy. Despite the repetitive silhouettes, the fashion of this period made many discoveries. Spaceflight wove fashion out of aluminium, plastic and shiny fringe, displacing wool, silk and cotton. This direction was supported with pleasure by Paco Rabanne, Pierre Cardin, Courreges, who turned their models into the crew of a spaceship. But changing fabrics was not enough for this fashionable era, and it changed its shape - with the light hand of Mary Quant, miniskirts came into fashion.

Fashion acquired a new look in 1968, dressed in the same cut as men's clothes: T-shirts, vests, shirts, jeans - unisex was felt everywhere, even in hairstyles. Hippies completely changed the attitude towards the body, along the way decorating it with stickers and tattoos symbolizing love and peace.

70s fashion

This narcotic bliss could continue to this day, only the female essence did not reconcile with gender equality and resurrected under the luxury of a new retro style that arose in the early 1970s in connection with the love of pre-war fashion of the 20s and 30s. Narrow shoulders, slim waists, maxi and midi skirts, platforms that changed the proportions of the female body, renewed interest in the female body. Free love, the first adult films, magazines, undressing has become commonplace.

80s fashion

But in the early 1980s, the consequences of free love became known, and this was reflected in fashion and attitudes towards the body, and an awareness of its value came. Japanese designers such as Yohji Yamamoto and Kenzo Takada carefully hid women's bodies in layered black outfits, and the rest of the fashion house designers followed suit. Fashion has deformed the female silhouette, and the successful collections of Thierry Mugler and Claude Montana have returned the shoulders of the 40s.

90s fashion

The success of Japanese designers was followed by the response of French fashion - Jean Paul Gaultier and Christian Lacroix revived the fashion for female forms. The first three years of the 90s echoed the 30s and 50s with emphasized corsets and deep cleavage of female sexuality. And then followed the crisis and the birth of new styles, such as grunge, ethnic and ecological.

Fashion for interest in the body was revived in the form of ritual tattoos of Brazilian Indians, proposed by Jean-Paul Gaultier. But in order not to scare his fans too much, the designer suggested not to get tattoos on the body, but to try them on with the help of flesh-colored turtlenecks he created with pictures printed on them.

Fashion is an art, it either gives rise to a work of the author's fantasy, or admires the majesty of the past, or is depleted under the pressure of the present. But it is always moving, moving cyclically, reflecting history. Fashion sometimes wraps female forms in cocoons, as if hiding the fragile creations of nature, sometimes mocks the female body, exalting unnatural ideals, but sometimes it shows the true beauty of a woman - and in these moments she is beautiful!

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Clothes of citizens (1917-1922)

The First World War, the revolutionary upheaval and the Civil War changed the appearance of the citizens of Russia. The iconic symbolism of the costume began to appear more distinctly. It was a time when solidarity or opposition was expressed with the help of a costume or its individual details; it was used as a screen behind which it was possible to temporarily hide one's true attitude to the events taking place. “In Moscow, oats were given out on cards. Never before has the capital of the republic experienced such a difficult time as in the winter of the twentieth year. It was “an era of endless hungry lines, “tails” in front of empty “food distributors”, an epic era of rotten frozen carrion, moldy bread crusts and inedible surrogates.
“No firewood is sold. There is nothing to drown the Dutch. In the rooms there are iron stoves - potbelly stoves. From them under the ceiling are samovar pipes. One into the other, one into the other, and right into the holes in the boards with which the windows are closed, jars are hung at the joints of the pipes so that the resin does not drip. . And yet, many still continued to follow fashion, although this was limited only to the silhouette of the suit or some details, for example, the design of the collar, the shape of the hat, and the height of the heel. The silhouette of women's clothing was on the way to simplification. It can be assumed that this trend was influenced not only by Parisian fashions (Gabriel Chanel's clothing house, opened in 1916, promoted "rob de chemise" - simple forms of dress, not complicated by cut), but also by economic reasons. "Magazine for hostesses" in 1916. wrote: "... there are almost no fabrics in warehouses or in stores, there are no trimmings, there are not even threads to sew a dress or coat." “... for a spool of thread (such a spool ... small) in the Samara province they give two poods of flour .. two poods for such a small spool ...” we learn from K. I. Chukovsky’s Diaries.

During this period, the price of cloth rose from 3 rubles. 64 kopecks (average price in 1893) up to 80,890 rubles. in 1918 . Further, the inflationary spiral unwound more and more. Priceless is the information from the Muscovite's Diary, in which the author N.P. Okunev daily recorded all everyday events, significant and trifling. “I ordered a pair of jackets for myself, the price is 300 rubles, I thought I was crazy, but they tell me that others pay 4,008,500 rubles for suits. The bacchanalia of life is complete!” Such an economic situation did not contribute to the development of a fashionable suit, but gave rise to very interesting forms of clothing. If M. Chudakova in the “Biography of M. Bulgakov” about 1919 we read: “on March, a colleague of our hero, a Kyiv doctor, wrote in his diary: “... no practice, no money either. And life here is becoming more expensive every day. Black bread already costs 4 rubles. 50 k. per pound, white - 6.50 and so on. And most importantly - in a hunger strike. Black bread - 12815 rubles. per pound. And there is no end in sight.” That was already in 1921. In a letter to his mother, Mikhail Bulgakov writes: “In Moscow, they only count by hundreds of thousands and millions. Black bread 4600 rub. per pound, white 14,000. And the price goes up and up! Stores are full of goods, but what can you buy! The theaters are full, but yesterday, when I was passing by the Bolshoi on business (I no longer think how it is possible to go without business!), the dealers were selling tickets for 75, 100, 150 thousand rubles! Moscow has everything: shoes, fabrics, meat, caviar, canned food, delicacies - everything! Cafes open and grow like mushrooms. And hundreds, hundreds everywhere! Hundreds!! The speculative wave is buzzing.
But back to 1918. At that time, fashion magazines were not published in Russia. In the same year, the “Magazine for Housewives” was closed (it was resumed only in 1922). Therefore, when considering fashionable influences, one can rely only on foreign sources or domestic ones that came out before 1918. A certain role in shaping the appearance of the townspeople was played by public distributors, where things flocked from abandoned shops, houses of the bourgeoisie, etc. In Valentin Kataev’s “Memoirs”, dating back to 1919, we read: , canvas pants, wooden sandals on a bare foot, a pipe smoking shag in my teeth, and on my shaved head a red Turkish fez with a black brush, which I received by order instead of a hat in the city clothing warehouse. This is also confirmed by the notes of N. Ya. Mandelstam: “In those years, clothes were not sold - they could only be obtained by order.”
The memoirs of I. Odoevtseva are colored with irony. “He (O. Mandelstam, editor's note) has never seen women in a men's suit. In those days, this was completely unthinkable. Only many years later, Marlene Dietrich introduced the fashion for men's suits. But it turns out that the first woman in pants was not she, but Mandelstam's wife. Not Marlene Dietrich, but Nadezhda Mandelstam revolutionized women's wardrobe. But, unlike Marlene Dietrich, this did not bring her fame. Her bold innovation was not appreciated either by Moscow or even by her own husband.

This is how M. Tsvetaeva described her “outfit” at a poetry evening at the Polytechnic Museum in 1921: “It would be hypocrisy not to mention yourself, having gone through almost everyone. So, that day I was revealed to “Rome and the World” in a green, like a cassock, you can’t name a dress (a paraphrase of the best times of a coat), honestly (that is, tightly) tied not even by an officer, but by a junker, 18th Peterhof ensign school, belt . An officer’s bag is also over his shoulder (brown, leather, for field glasses or cigarettes), which I would consider to take off as a betrayal and took off only on the third day after arrival (1922) in Berlin ... Legs in gray felt boots, although not for men, on the leg, surrounded by lacquered boats, they looked like pillars of an elephant. The whole toilet, by virtue of its monstrosity, removed from me any suspicion of deliberateness. Surprisingly frank notes of contemporaries. “And now I’m jumping up in the complete darkness of a winter night, throwing on an old fur coat and a scarf (after all, it’s not to stand in line in a hat, let the servants count for their brother, otherwise they will mock the lady)” . In connection with the change in the position of women that has occurred since the beginning of the war, a number of forms of men's clothing are transferred to women's. In 191681917. these are men's vests, in 1918-1920 leather jackets, which passed into everyday life from decommissioned military uniforms. (In 1916, scooters in the Russian army wore leather jackets). Due to the lack of information, the severance of traditional ties with Europe, the difficult economic situation and at the same time the preservation of old forms of clothing, the costume of many women was a rather eclectic picture. (This is evidenced by drawings, and photographs, and sculpture of those years). For example, a female police officer was dressed like this: a leather jacket, a blue uniform beret, a brown plush skirt, and lace-up boots with a cloth top. Non-serving ladies looked no less exotic. In the “Diaries” of K. I. Chukovsky we read: “Yesterday I was in the House of Writers: everyone’s clothes are wrinkled, sagging, it’s clear that people are sleeping without undressing, hiding in a coat. Women are chewy. As if someone chewed them and spat them out. This feeling of bruising, tatteredness arises even now when looking at photographs of that time. Old forms of clothing are everywhere preserved. Moreover, in the working environment they continue to sew dresses in the fashion of the beginning of the century, and in provincial towns on the national outskirts, the traditions of the national costume also influence clothes. In 1917 the silhouette of the women's dress still retains the outlines inherent in the previous period, but the waist becomes much looser, the skirt is straighter and slightly longer (up to 12 cm above the ankle). The silhouette resembles an elongated oval. From top to bottom, the skirt narrows to 1.5-1.7 m. After 1917 two silhouettes coexist in parallel: an extended bottom and a “tube”, the so-called “rob de chemise” shirt dress. Shirt dresses have appeared in Russia before (S. Diaghilev's memoirs of N. Goncharova date back to 1914): “But the most curious thing is that they imitate her not only as an artist, but also externally. It was she who brought into fashion a shirt-dress, black and white, blue and red. But it's still nothing. She drew flowers on her face. And soon the nobility and the bohemia rode out on a sleigh with horses, houses, elephants on their cheeks, on their necks, on their foreheads.
Dress silhouette 1920-1921 a straight bodice, the waist is lowered to the level of the hips, the skirt, easily draped in folds, 8-12 cm long above the ankle, is already largely close to the fashion of subsequent years. But often one could see a lady in a dress made of curtain fabric. And although this question seems controversial to contemporaries, enough examples can be found in the literature. So A. N. Tolstoy: “Then the war ended. Olga Vyacheslavovna bought a skirt from a green plush curtain at the market and went to serve in various institutions. Or Nina Berberova: “I was left without a job; I had felt boots from a carpet, a dress from a tablecloth, a fur coat from my mother's rotunda, a hat from a sofa cushion embroidered with gold. It is difficult to say whether this was artistic exaggeration or reality. Fabrics produced in the country in the period 1920-1923. "differed in simplicity and were printed according to the least labor-intensive old samples." But there were apparently few of them, so that dresses made from curtains became a ubiquitous phenomenon. Tatyana Nikolaevna Lappa recalls this in the “Biography of M. Bulgakov”: “I went in my only black crepe de chine dress with panne velvet: I changed it from the previous summer coat and skirt.” Chests were opened, and grandmother's outfits were brought to light: dresses with puffed sleeves, with trains. Let us recall from M. Tsvetaeva: “I dive under my feet into the blackness of a huge wardrobe and immediately find myself in seventy years and seven years ago; not at seventy-seven, but at 70 and 7. With a dreamlike infallible knowledge, I feel for something long ago and obviously from gravity that has fallen down, swollen, settled, spilled a whole tin puddle of silk, and I fill myself with it up to my shoulders. And further: “And a new dive to the black bottom, and again a hand in a puddle, but no longer tin, but mercury with water running away, playing from under the hands, not collected in a handful, scattering, scattering from under the rowing fingers, for if the first it sank from the weight, the second from the lightness flew off: from the hanger as from a branch. And behind the first, settled, brown, faev, great-grandmother Countess Ledokhovskaya great-grandmother Countess Ledokhovskaya unsewn, her daughter my grandmother Maria Lukinichnaya Bernatskaya unsewn, her daughter my mother Maria Alexandrovna Mein unsewn, sewn by the great-granddaughter of the first Marina in our Polish family by me, mine, seven years back, girlhood, but according to the cut of the great-grandmother: the bodice is like a cape, and the skirt is like the sea ... ". Contemporaries recall that “the old dresses of mothers and grandmothers were altered, jewelry and lace “bourgeois belching” were removed from them. Struggling with any manifestation of “bourgeoisness”, the blue blouses sang: “Our charter is strict: no rings, no earrings. Our ethics down with cosmetics ”... For jewelry, they were branded with shame and Komsomol tickets were taken away. This did not apply to the fashions of the revived bourgeois ladies during the NEP, since these were hostile elements. In magazines 1917-1918. there are recommendations on how to make a new one from an old dress, how to sew a hat, even how to make shoes. In the 1918-1920s, a lot of home-made shoes with wooden, cardboard, rope soles appeared in everyday life. V.G.Korolenko wrote in a letter to A.V.Lunacharsky: “...look what your Red Army soldiers and the intelligentsia serving with you are wearing: you will often meet a Red Army soldier in bast shoes, and an intelligentsia serving in somehow made wooden sandals. It is reminiscent of classical antiquity, but it is very inconvenient now for winter.” Fashion at this time offers double heels (about 9 cm high). By the beginning of the 20s, the heel not only rises, but also narrows down. Contemporaries testify: “In 1922-1923. military rough boots with windings disappear. The army puts on boots. The silhouette of military clothing is also being transformed. After 1917 the coat lengthens again, the waist gradually falls 5-7 cm below the natural one. Fashion 1917 as if referring to a folk costume. The magazine "Ladies' World" (No. 2; 1917) writes that "imitation in the cut of warm ladies' coats of caftans and fur coats of various provinces is in fashion. The cut of the Yekaterinoslav "woman's" outfits - wide fur coats at the bottom, with cut-off waistlines and huge turn-down collars falling on the shoulders, seems very fashionable, jumping off a Parisian magazine. In fact, the simplification of the form led to the traditionally simple forms of the folk costume.

The colors of the clothes were dominated by natural brown tones. In 1918 "fashionable color - dark earthy, both one-color and melange"
, "camel" color in combination with black. Huge wide-brimmed hats of the pre-war period are a thing of the past, however, many styles of hats remain in use for a long time. A girl in a hat, for example, can be seen in the photo of the parade of the Vseobuch troops in 1918. on Red Square and among the Komsomol women who organize an educational program in the Rostov region. Hats were also worn by the “first ladies” of the state - N. K. Krupskaya, M. I. Ulyanova, A. M. Kollontai. True, we are talking about small hats with rather narrow brim, small in size, usually decorated only with a bow, but their widespread and widest distribution, both in the provinces and in the capital, is beyond doubt.
In 1918 boas, gorgets go out of fashion; to replace them, magazines offer scarves with fur, lace, and tassels trimmed along the edge. These scarves were worn both around the neck and on the hat. In everyday life, knitted scarves were most often used.
In men's clothing, the most active period in politics and social reconstruction did not give any new forms, but only served as an impetus for the destruction of the traditions of wearing it. In the men's suit, the forms of previous years are preserved, with only a slight change in details. In 1918-1920. only turn-down collars of shirts and blouses remain in use; standing collars do not receive further distribution. Tie knot after 1920 stretches, becomes narrow and approaches the rectangle as much as possible, and the tie itself is narrower and longer. Their coloring is faded, dim. The norm is a turned men's suit. In “Memoirs” by A. Mariengof we read: “Shershenevich in a chic light gray jacket with a large check. But the treacherous left pocket... on the right side, because the jacket is upside down. Almost all the dandies of that era had their upper pockets on the right side. Men's clothing is being militarized to the maximum, and at the same time, it is losing the traditionally established rules for the color matching of boots to trousers, and both to a jacket. A jacket in combination with any trousers is becoming the most popular clothing for men. "He was wearing a paramilitary suit - an English jacket, plaid, with leather on the back, riding breeches and black boots." “After Brest, many demobilized people appeared at the stations. Soldier's overcoats "came into fashion" - they hung in almost every hallway, exhaling the smell of shag, station burning and rotten earth. In the evenings, going out into the street, they put on overcoats - it was safer in them. In everyday life, knitwear is widely distributed, apparently due to the relative ease of manufacture. From Kataev: “Vanechka was dressed in a black tunic, mustard breeches, and huge, above the knee, clumsy cowhide boots that made him look like a cat in boots. Over the tunic, around the neck, a thick collar of a market paper sweater was released. Leather jackets were not only very popular, but were also a mandatory distinction for commanders, commissars and political workers of the Red Army, as well as employees of the technical troops. True, contemporaries refute their mass distribution. They continued to wear the uniforms of various departments. And if in 1914-1917. the uniforms of officials were not observed so strictly, then from 1918. and completely ceases to correspond to the position held and remains in use as familiar clothes. After the abolition of the old ranks and titles in January 1918. military uniforms of the tsarist army began to be worn with buttons made of bone or lined with fabric (instead of buttons with a coat of arms). “Officially, it was announced the abolition of all distinctions, including shoulder straps. We were forced to remove them, and instead of buttons with eagles, sew on civilian bone buttons or sheathe old metal ones with cloth. Contemporaries recall that "... in the 1920s, a campaign against student caps began, and their owners were persecuted for their bourgeois way of thinking."

Eclecticism was also inherent in the men's suit. Here is what I. Bunin wrote about the clothes of the Red Army soldiers: “They are dressed in some kind of team rags. Sometimes the uniform of the 70s, sometimes, for no apparent reason, red leggings and at the same time an infantry overcoat and a huge old-fashioned saber. But representatives of another class were no less extravagantly dressed. In the book “The Biography of M. Bulgakov” we read: “On one of the days of this winter, in the house number 13 on Andreevsky Spusk, an episode occurred that was preserved in the memory of Tatyana Nikolaevna. One time the blueskins came. They are shod in ladies' boots, and spurs are on the boots. And everyone is perfumed with "Coeur de Jeannet" - fashionable perfumes.
The appearance of the crowd and individuals was lumpenized. Let's go back to the literature. Bunin: “In general, you often see students: in a hurry somewhere, all torn to pieces, in a dirty nightgown under an old open overcoat, a faded cap on his shaggy head, knocked-down shoes on his feet, a rifle hanging down on a rope on his shoulder ...
However, the devil knows whether he is really a student. And here is what the crowd looked like in M. Bulgakov's description: “Among them were teenagers in khaki shirts, there were girls without hats, some in a white sailor's blouse, some in a colorful jacket. There were sandals on bare feet, in black worn-out shoes, young men in blunt-toed boots. Vl. Khodasevich recalled that before the war, individual literary associations could afford something like a uniform. “In order to get into this sanctuary, I had to sew black trousers and to them - an ambiguous jacket: not a gymnasium one, because it was black, but not a student one, because it had silver buttons. I must have looked like a telegraph operator in this outfit, but everything was redeemed by the opportunity to finally get on Tuesday: on Tuesdays literary interviews took place in the circle. Literary figures, actors acquire a peculiar, even exotic look. But this was not so much the outrageousness of the futurists' clothes (the notorious yellow jacket of Mayakovsky), but simply the absence of clothes as such and random sources of obtaining them. M. Chagall recalled: “I wore wide trousers and a yellow duster (a gift from the Americans, who sent us used clothes out of mercy) ...”. M. Bulgakov, according to the memoirs of Tatyana Nikolaevna, at that time wore a fur coat “... in the form of a rotunda, which the old people of the clergy wore. On raccoon fur, and the collar turned inside out with fur. The top was blue ribbed. It was long and without fasteners - it really wrapped around and that's it. It must have been my father's coat. Maybe his mother sent him from Kyiv with someone, or maybe he brought it himself in 1923 ... ". The poet Nikolai Ushakov wrote in 1929. in his memoirs: “In 1918-1919, Kyiv became a literary center; Ehrenburg walked in those days in a coat that dragged along the sidewalks, and in a gigantic wide-brimmed hat ... ".
Based on all these materials - memoirs, photographs - we can conclude that the men's clothing of this period was extremely eclectic in nature and, in the absence of stylistic unity, was based on the personal tastes and capabilities of its owner. From 1922-1923. domestic fashion magazines begin to appear. But, although at that time such masters as N.P. Lamanova, L.S. Popova, V.E. Tatlin made attempts to create new clothes that corresponded to the spirit of the time, and in particular overalls, their experiments were only sketchy.

The development of fashion in the 1910s of the XX century was largely determined by global events, the main of which was the First World War of 1914-1918. The changed living conditions and worries that ended up on women's shoulders demanded, first of all, convenience and comfort in clothes. The financial crisis associated with the war also did not contribute to the popularity of luxurious dresses made from expensive fabrics. However, as is often the case, difficult times created an even greater demand for beautiful clothes: women, not wanting to put up with circumstances, showed miracles of ingenuity in search of fabrics and new styles. As a result, the second decade of the 20th century was remembered for models that combined elegance and convenience, and the appearance of the legendary star Coco Chanel in the fashion sky.

At the beginning of the second decade of the twentieth century, Paul Poiret remained the main dictator in the fashion world. In 1911, women's trousers and culottes made a splash. The fashion designer continued to popularize his work through social events and various trips. Poiret celebrated the creation of the Thousand and One Nights collection with a luxurious reception, and later in the same 1911 he opened his own school of arts and crafts, Ecole Martin. Also, the fashion revolutionary continued to publish books and catalogs with his products. Then Poiret went on a world tour, which lasted until 1913. During this time, the artist has shown his models in London, Vienna, Brussels, Berlin, Moscow, St. Petersburg and New York. All his shows and trips were accompanied by articles and photographs in newspapers, so that the news about the French couturier spread all over the world.

Poiret was not afraid of experiments and became the first fashion designer to create his own fragrance - Rosina perfume, named after his eldest daughter. In 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War, the House of Paul Poiret ceased its activities, and the artist made an attempt to return to the world of fashion only in 1921.

This, however, turned out to be a failure, largely due to the fact that the luxurious and exotic style of Poiret was supplanted by the revolutionary models of Coco Chanel.

Emancipation and the first practical models

The first step in the transition to "comfortable" fashion was the final disappearance of corsets, voluminous hats, and "limping" skirts from women's wardrobes. In the early 1910s, new models came into use, the main among them was the "yule skirt" with a high waist, wide hips, drapery and narrow at the ankles. As for the length, until 1915 the hem of the dresses reached the ground. Skirts, on the other hand, were shortened a little: models came into fashion that reached “only” up to the leg lift. Dresses were often worn with capes, and dresses with a train were also popular. A V-shaped neckline was common, not only on the chest, but also on the back.

The craving for practicality touched not only clothing, but the entire female image. In the second decade of the twentieth century, ladies for the first time stopped doing intricate elegant hairstyles and opened their necks. Short haircuts have not yet become as common as they were in the 1920s, but the fashion for long, beautifully styled hair on the head has become a thing of the past.

At that time, operetta was extremely popular throughout Europe, and the dancers who performed on stage became an example to follow, including in terms of clothing. Along with the operetta, the audience enjoyed the cabaret, and especially the tango dance. Especially for the tango, a stage costume was invented - Turkish trousers, as well as draped skirts, in the cuts of which the dancers' legs were visible. Such outfits were used only on stage, but in 1911 the Parisian fashion house "Drecol and Beschof" offered the ladies the so-called trouser dresses and a skirt-pants. The conservative part of French society did not accept the new outfits, and those girls who dared to appear in them in public were accused of denying generally accepted moral standards. Women's trousers, which first appeared in the early 1910s, were negatively received by the public and became popular only much later.

In 1913, emancipant women began to protest in Europe against movement-restricting clothing, insisting on the appearance of simple cut and comfortable models. At the same time, there was still a slight but tangible influence of sports on everyday fashion. Abundant stripes and decorations, intricate appliqués and details that adorned clothes began to disappear. Women allowed themselves to bare their arms and legs. In general, the cut of clothes has become much more free, shirts and dress shirts have come into fashion.

All these trends were characteristic of casual wear, while dressy models were still kept in the style of the 1910s. High-waisted dresses with elements of oriental style, models with a narrow bodice and wide skirt with frills were still popular in the world. A pannier skirt came into fashion, the name of which is translated from French as "basket". The model was distinguished by a barrel-shaped silhouette - the hips were wide, but the front and back of the skirt was flat. In short, the outfits for going out were more elegant and conservative, and some fashion designers sought to keep the trends observed in the fashion of the 1900s. Erte became the most notable among the artists who adhered to conservative models.

Loud debut of the great Erte

The most popular fashion designer Erte, whose name is associated with luxurious and feminine images of the second decade of the twentieth century, did not recognize the trend towards practicality and functionality.

Roman Petrovich Tyrtov was born in 1892 in St. Petersburg, and at the age of twenty he moved to Paris. Erte took the pseudonym from the initial letters of the name and surname. Even as a child, the boy showed a penchant for drawing and design. From the age of 14, he attended classes at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, and after moving to the French capital, he went to work at the Paul Poiret House. His high-profile debut in Paris was the creation of costumes for the play "The Minaret" in 1913. The very next year, when Erte left the House of Poiret, his models were very popular not only in France, but also in the theater troupes of Monte Carlo, New York, Chicago and Glyndbourne. Music halls filled the talented fashion designer with orders, and Erte created costumes for productions such as Irwin Berlin's Music Box Repertoire, George White's Scandals and Mary of Manhattan. Each image created by the couturier was his own creation: in his work, Erte never relied on the experience of his colleagues and predecessors.

The most recognizable image created by the fashion designer was the mysterious beauty, wrapped in luxurious furs, with many accessories, the main of which were long strands of pearls and beads, topped with an original headdress. Erte created his outfits, inspired by ancient Egyptian and Greek mythology, as well as Indian miniatures and, of course, Russian classical art. Denying a non-fitted silhouette and abstract geometric patterns, in 1916 Erte became the chief artist of the Harpers Bazaar magazine, a contract with which he was offered by a magnate.

Popular even before the outbreak of the First World War, Erte was one of the trendsetters until his death in 1990 at the age of 97.

War and fashion

The dispute between adherents of the old style and supporters of practical clothing was decided by the First World War that began in 1914. Women, forced to do all the male work, simply could not afford to dress up in long puffy skirts and corsets.

During this period, functional details began to appear in clothes, referring to the military style - patch pockets, turn-down collars, jackets with lacing, lapels and metal buttons that girls wore with skirts. At the same time, women's suits came into fashion. The hard years brought with them another reform: comfortable knitwear was used in tailoring, from which jumpers, cardigans, scarves and hats were created. Casual dresses, the length of which became shorter and reached only to the calves, were worn with high, coarse lace-up boots, under which women wore leggings.

In general, this time can be described as a spontaneous search for new forms and styles, a passionate desire to get away from all the fashionable standards that were imposed by fashion houses in the 1900s. Trends literally replaced one another. Common to the wartime silhouettes was the freedom of cut, sometimes even the "saggy" clothes. Now the outfits did not emphasize all the curves of the female figure, but, on the contrary, hid it. Even the belts no longer fitted the waist, not to mention the sleeves, blouses and skirts.

The war, perhaps, made women much more independent than all the emancipant outbursts that characterized the early 1910s. First, women took over the work that men used to do: they took places in factories, hospitals and offices. In addition, many of them ended up in auxiliary military services, where working conditions dictated practicality as the main criterion when choosing clothes. The girls wore uniforms, khaki sports shirts and caps. Perhaps, for the first time, women felt their independence and significance, became confident in their strengths and intellectual abilities. All this allowed the ladies themselves to direct the development of fashion.

During the war, when almost all fashion houses were closed, women voluntarily got rid of all imposed canons, freeing clothes from unnecessary details. The practical and functional style took root and fell in love so much that the fashion houses that resumed their activities after the war were forced to follow new trends, and attempts to regain popularity of the previously relevant crinoline and uncomfortable "narrow" styles ended in failure.

Of particular note, however, appeared at the same time and became extremely popular "military crinolines". These fluffy skirts differed from their predecessors in that they used not the usual hoops, but a large number of petticoats to maintain their shape. It took a lot of fabric to sew such outfits and, despite the low quality, the price of "military crinolines" was quite high. This did not prevent the voluminous skirt from becoming one of the main hits of the war, and later this model became a symbol of the romantic style caused by general protest and war weariness. Unable to resist the mastered practical style, fashion designers decided to bring originality and beauty to simple-style outfits through details and finishes. Dresses "haute couture" were richly decorated with pearls, ribbons, appliqués and beads.

The impact of the First World War on fashion cannot be described only by the emerging trend towards practicality. Soldiers who participated in battles in foreign territories brought home as trophies, including new exotic fabrics, as well as hitherto unseen shawls, scarves and jewelry from Tunisia and Morocco. Fashion designers, getting acquainted with the cultures of different countries, absorbed ideas and embodied new styles, patterns and finishes in tailoring.

After the end of the war, when secular life improved, and balls began to be given in Paris again, many women abandoned the costumes that had become familiar and returned to pre-war fashion. However, this period did not last long - after the war, a completely new stage in fashion began, which at that time was most influenced by Coco Chanel.

Men's style from Chanel

Coco Chanel, by her own admission, tried all her life to adapt a men's suit to the needs and lifestyle of a modern woman.

Coco Chanel began her journey in the fashion world in 1909 when she opened her own hat shop in Paris. The rumor about the new designer quickly spread throughout the French capital, and the very next year, Coco was able to launch not only hats, but also clothes, opening a store at 21 Rue Cambon, and then her own Fashion House in the Biarritz resort. Despite the high cost of clothing and the simplicity of the cut, which was unusual for that time, Chanel's models were rapidly gaining popularity, and the designer had a wide clientele.

The main task of the clothes that fashion designers previously offered to women was to emphasize the wasp waist and highlight the chest, creating unnatural curves. Coco Chanel was thin, tanned and athletic, and the style common at that time did not suit her perfectly - with all the desire, no clothes could make an "hourglass" out of a girl's figure. But she was the perfect model for her own outfits. “Cuffed in a corset, breasts out, butt exposed, so tight at the waist, as if cut into two parts ... to maintain such a woman is the same as managing real estate,” said Koko.

Promoting convenience and unisex style, the fashion designer created very simple dresses and skirts, distinguished by clear lines and the absence of jewelry. The girl, without hesitation, swept aside unnecessary details and unnecessary accessories in search of the ideal model that does not restrict movement, and at the same time allows a woman to remain a woman. Regardless of public opinion, she deftly introduced elements of masculine style into women's clothing, independently setting an example of the correct use of simple outfits. "Once I put on a men's sweater, just like that, because I felt cold ... I tied it with a scarf (at the waist). That day I was with the British. None of them noticed that I was wearing a sweater ..." Chanel recalled. That is how her famous plunging-neck sailor suits with turn-down collars and "jockey" leather jackets appeared.

When creating clothes, Chanel used simple materials - cotton, knitwear. In 1914, she shortened the women's skirt. At the start of World War I, Coco designed practical sweaters, blazers, shirt dresses, blouses, and suits. It was Chanel who contributed to the popularization of pajamas, and in 1918 even created women's pajamas, in which you could go down to the bomb shelter.

Closer to 1920, Coco, like many artists of that time, became interested in Russian motifs. This line in the work of Chanel was developed already at the beginning of the third decade of the twentieth century.

The second decade of the twentieth century, despite all the hardships and hardships, became a turning point in the evolution of fashion - it was in the 1910s that artists began to actively search for new forms that could give women freedom without depriving them of grace. The reforms brought into fashion by the war and the trends of the post-war years became decisive in the development of the industry in the following decades.