Photo: Women in Struggle Magazine, No. 35, 1947
Center for Research of Fashion and Clothing (CIMO) researchers will present the work Women in Struggle / Women in Fashion: Visual Construction and Representation of Women through the Media of Photography in the Phase of Socialist Realism at the conference Socialism: Construction and Deconstruction; Pula, 1.-3. October 2015
Abstract
In the post-war period of early socialism, ideology constructs a type of new woman who should participate equally and actively in the labor market, work on her own education and mobilize in the political activities of building Yugoslav socialism. Media agitation through photography faithfully supports the gigantic effort of the ruling socialist apparatus in constructing possible new gender perspectives.
In this context, the role of the Anti-Fascist Women's Front (AFŽ, Croatia) and the magazine Women in Struggle (Žena u borbi)), in which the type of new woman is represented and promoted, is unavoidable. The magazine distances itself from a woman in fashion who could potentially devote herself to her own body, clothing and appearance. At the same time, although paradoxically, AFŽ publishes the fashion magazine Our Fashion (Naša moda), which shapes a different model of a woman as a devoted mother, housewife and consumer. The magazine Our Fashion (Naša moda) is an example of slipping out of socialist realism, towards the affirmation and acceptance of the rules of the fashion system, which then constructs new, fashionable models of the organization of the body – suit - appearance. By reading in parallel the photographs and illustrations from AFŽ's magazines Women in Struggle and Our Fashion, we try to decode the forms of identification and differentiation in clothing and fashion as a culture of everyday life in the phase of socialist realism.
Keywords: medium of photography and illustration, ideology and everyday life in the era of socialist realism, new gender perspectives
Authors:
Lea Vene and Ivana Čuljak, researchers at the Center for Research of Fashion and Clothing (CIMO);
http://www.unipu.hr/fileadmin/datoteke/CPKIS/socnaklupi2015_KNJIGA_SAZETAKA.pdf
* The project is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia and the City Office for Culture, Education and Sports of the City of Zagreb for 2015.
* Copyright © cimo - a center for research of fashion and clothing. All rights reserved.
* Photos: private archive t.v.
