ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a cultural-historical notion of brands in socialist Hungary, particularly with regard to how various spiritual, psychological, material, social, and political considerations all supported a seemingly unlikely phenomenon: A small niche of brand culture in a Soviet bloc-planned economy appeared a decade or two before the fall of state socialism in 1989. Blue jeans as a consciously worn fashion item started to appear in larger cities from the early 1960s, and as was true in many other countries, wearing denim became, together with rock n roll or beat music, an integral part of a booming youth culture centred around acts of performance, immediacy, spontaneity, and a certain lived authenticity vis-vis manipulative and violent adult universes offered by capitalism or the Vietnam War. The scarcity and price of jeans and the possibility of counterfeit items lent the issue of real versus fake a special importance in the denim stories.
