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Fashion Friday: The Power of Plumage The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in the c

Fashion Friday: The Power of Plumage

Thedissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in the creation of fifteen nation-states including Ukraine and Estonia, while 1993 saw the end of communist rule in Czechoslovakia, becoming the Czech Republic and Slovakia. These nations are featured here in my second-to-last fashion plate post with costumes honoring easier days of traditional ethnic dress.

Leo Tolstoy could be argued as the conscience of Russian peasants by his fictional writing in the classic Anna Karenina.Tolstoy was in fact a nobleman and landowner yet he adorned himself in smocks and meager dress, fashioning humility as he wrote of earthly indulgences and subtle sermons on the wickedness of the human condition.

The dress of laborers is also honored in a 1936 Soviet Union publication on a revered textile workerinMiss USSR where a young woman’s 10-hour days and record-breaking statistics on factory looms are lauded as joyful. Her uniform is a black silk blouse and skirt and her profile is documented as “slim” and “little.”

Yet, as with the earliest civilizations there is a place for costume, for adornment that celebrates more than the work of our hands or size of our bodies, whether a farmer’s, a writer’s, or a weaver’s; we yearn for the occasion allowing ornamentation that arouses our senses and inflames our imaginations.

My first fashion plate is titled the USSR Plume Dress, perhaps interpreted by some as a peacock’s egoism; the second plate may be favored by fan-followers of Egon Schiele, while the last crowns brawn and might.

Here is a listing of sources from the UWM Special Collections and the UWM American Geographical Society Library that I have augmented with digital color and outline to emphasize particular details of my inspiration:

1, 8) Wood-engravings by Nikolas Piskariov as featured in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina; published in the USSR in 1933 and printed by the Limited Editions Club, respectively titled Anna’s Fall and Head-Piece to Part the Fifth.
2-4) My contemporary designs of the USSR Plume Dress, Estonian Edith Dress, and Czech Crown Dress based on maps from the collection of the UWM American Geographical Society Library that show iconic costumes, respectively titled Russian Empire 1757, published in Augsburg, GE by Augustae Vindel in 1757; Folklore Map of Czechoslovakia, published in Czechoslovakia by the Ministerstvo Informaci in 1948; Parishes of Estonia 2010, published by the AS Regio in 2010.
3) Black and white drawing of Czechoslovakian dress by Belle Northrup in A Short Description of Historic Fashion published by Columbia University’s Teachers College in 1925.
5) Photograph of Dusya Vinogradovo a 21-year old woman dubbed Miss USSR: The Story of a Girl Stakhanovite, the Soviet Union’s leader in weaving production and noted to be every young person’s friend as she was “free and happy”; published in New York by International Publishers in 1936.
6, 7) Illustrations by Noel L. Nisbet from the collection of Russian Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, published in London by George G. Harrap & CO in 1916, respectively titled They Came to the Place Where He Had Left Her and His Wife Caressed and Wheedled Him.