Authors

Sonia Andras¹;  ¹ University of Pisa, Italy

Discussion

This paper will explore the fluid discourse around dress and fashion as the Romanian Kingdom faced an abrupt end and Romania's Stalinisation shifted from mere rumour to reality. It will contrast the reception of Christian Dior's New Look in 1948, symbolising women's return to fashion after years of wartime austerity, with the model of the 'new Communist woman' imposed by the USSR, whose main prerogative was being a worker and mother instead of a chic lady. The aim is to highlight how the choice of style in the last two years of the 1940s implied political, social, cultural and ideological positionality and assumed a particular identity as a personal and collective choice. While the New Look has often been deemed as deleterious to women's emancipation, it should be treated within a postwar context as an opportunity given to women to forego practicality and wartime austerity in favour of elegant, albeit nostalgic, glamour. In a Romanian context, the ‘new Communist woman’ is a direct descendant of the two main interwar models, the ‘modern girl’ of the 1920s, or the rebellious flapper or garçonne, with her slender, Egyptian-styled silhouette and the ‘new woman’ of the 1930s, infused with traditionalism and right-wing rhetoric as a return to the voluptuous, submissive mother ideal, as lively as a Grecian marble statue. The New Look is a dual symbol of colonialism as the worldwide spread of Parisian fashion and decolonisation as a means of expression and emancipation for women, allowing them to break free from the austerity of wartime and their powerlessness in succeeding conflicts and upheaval, promptly curtailed at the dawn of the People’s Republic of Romania. This paper will use an interdisciplinary approach blending cultural studies (fashion, gender, media) with sociological aesthetics and employ semiotics and sociological physiognomy to analyse both written and visual texts. In the short span between 1948 and 1949, Romania found itself in a liminal space, navigating between different eras, ideologies, political structures, and empires. Specifically, it was the dialectical shift from a restored parliamentary monarchy to Stalinism, from moderate liberalism to communism, from a multi-party democracy to a single-party dictatorship, and from chiefly Western to USSR influence. This paper makes a significant contribution to fashion studies by exploring Romania between 1933 and 144,  a relatively overlooked era in Central and Eastern European fashion studies, and to Romanian Studies by advancing research on fashion in Romania during a less-investigated timeline.