Perestroika of fashion

In this edition, we offer an overview of the phenomenon of alternative fashion, which arose at the end of the 20th century amid the collapse of the Soviet empire. When the bohemia of the 1980-1990s tried to reflect on modernity through counter-cultural outfits, without much chance of realizing ideas in the form of clothing, since the light industry and economics of the country during this period were rapidly wilted. This story is proposed to be considered in the range of take -off and falling of an equally complex history of the Soviet fashion, which declatively claimed from the first years of the Soviet Union to become an alternative to bourgeois fashion. A story similar to a romantic mood to the history of constructivists of the 1920-1930s, when artists and students were called up to a fashionable front instead of designers and seamstresses. This is why we cannot do without a cursory review of history from the "alternative ”of the beginning of the 20th century to the" alternative of its end, between which there were ruin deadly wars, each time plunging the country into poverty and forcing the population to be content with almost any clothing. The difficult times that mixed with the periods of the NEP, "Soviet chic" and "stagnation", when the line of the "socialist costume" degraded, and the Soviet economy was not ready to satisfy the increased needs of the population and the individualization of taste. The very existence of these problems in the USSR was not recognized and was not properly studied, which ended in the end of the key role in search of alternatives at any level, from wearable, to the most elaborate art forms. By the end of the twentieth century, the understanding of the mainstream was blurred in fashion, in different social groups it was its own. But, speaking of fashion, we are trying to talk about residents primarily in Moscow and large cities of Soviet space.
Not tamed unofficial fashion, balancing on the verge of performances and a design show, appeared suddenly. The new fashion designers simply conquered their own space on the rock scene, in squat and on official catwalks.
With the beginning of perestroika, the attitude to representatives of subcultures gradually changed - from frankly negative to ironic and interested. But for a long enough fashionistas with their defiant dress code, ordinary Soviet citizens perceived approximately as well as aliens. The amateur activity in the field of fashion has actively flourished in the student environment of the 1980s. From the ranks of the student art freight, new, alternative designers came out mainly. Some of them were guided by avant-garde artists, without taking into account the real fashion.
The adventures of artists in the framework of the fashion industry, where the names of Soviet designers intertwined with famous names from the world fashion industry for all participants in this movement ended differently. Everyone has chosen their own path