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Constructivism & early avant-garde Russian fashion design
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- Liubov Popova and Varvana Stepanova were at the vanguard of art , and fashion design and textiles in the early 20th Century. They studied in paris under Le Fauconnier, and Metzinger who were both leading Cubist artists. These avant-garde Bolsheviks were the most avant-garde artistic designers in the world at the time. They developed and promoted a new fashion, for the new Soviet woman, and man. Lenin promoted a Social-Democratic agenda, and the atmosphere around this period post-1917 till the mid-20's was very fashion forward and progressive.
See previous article on visionary Constructivist fashion
The propaganda in the West has discredited everything from this time period because of the Terror that followed under Stalin. But these brave visionary artists promoted advanced ideas that have influenced western designers. Both Popova and Stepanova lived and worked under Le Fauconner, and Metzinger who were leading avant-garde artists in paris at the time(see photo of the three). They moved in the most advanced artistic circles.
Pierre Cardin's paper dresses from his space-age 1960s designs was a fad of dresses made out of paper that spread across the United States. This fashion fad lasted two years and drew in women across the social stratum. "Paper dresses are perhaps one of the most democratic and liberating moments in the course of fashion" according to an article in Atopos.
Paper dresses were what some Russian Constructivists advocated in the early 20's. Radical Bolshevik clothing. A revolutionary dress, that was to be hygenic, simple, easy to wear, and industrial. They produced some amazing blueprints for some amazing clothes, and fabrics. They were designing clothes for a utopian Democratic-Socialist world. Pierre Cardin was just reviving this theory of clothing in the 60's and it still was Revolutionary. ( not many people in the West acknowledge this).
Popova and Stepanova were reaching beyond their circumstance, and that is what all art is about. Liubov and Popova used geometric shapes, the triangle, the circle, to produce a sense of levitation, the textile pattern in some of her dresses interchanges sizes, and sequences, and uses three dimensionality as was used in Cubism, to give a sense of space. This visual result fit her conception of the emancipated Soviet women. Out of the fields and into the factories. Stepanova and Popova created the concept of specialized clothing. They developed the first modern sports clothing. They anticipated the modern Revolution in dress that is so ubiquitous today.
- They developed the modern ready-to-wear. Aristocratic made-to- order to Democratic ready-to-wear. Fashion was the strict domain of the upper classes not only in Moscow, but in Paris. There was no ready-to-wear.Their designs never caught on , they were not applicable to modern tastes and no manufacturer, could be found to mass market this clothing. Still, real artists designing clothes, is a very Revolutionary concept. Target, didnt exist then.
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