ABSTRACT
This chapter is devoted to the reconstruction of discourse on fashion in socialist Russia in the 1950s and 1960s. It is common to consider fashion a phenomenon of capitalist societies and to question the existence of fashion in socialist societies. The view is that Soviet industry did not attempt to constantly launch new goods as in Europe and North America, where the view was that Soviet “people looked like a grey mass.”1 I believe that Soviet fashion was not that grey and dull. In many ways it can be compared with Western fashion, although it had its own peculiarities, with state control over appearance being one of the most signifi cant.
