Fa-fa-fa-fa Fashion

Further to the questions asked below, I've posted up at The neglected Measures Taken a feature on a book called Fashioning Socialism on the DDR's penchant for 'Mode' that I recently submitted to a respected journal, who may or may not print it. My eventual contention, that fashion in the eastern bloc was essentially an interestingly crap version of its Western equivalent because of the state's reliance on the continuation of capitalist alltagsleben, can't quite be transferred to market Stalinist conditions. Borrowing Kodwo Eshun's phrase (on music journalism) of the 'future-shock absorber' might be more appropriate - modernity's acceleration and capitalism's simultaneous growth and putrefaction are no longer 'expressed' but avoided or hidden in personal appearance, much as it is in Barratt Homes. NB: my own sartorial choices, usually for second hand and frequently grey items with occasional brightly coloured shirts made of 70s fabrics, accessorised with Stalinist pin badges, is also not an adequate response to late capitalism.



An aside: there is, despite the resistance of the sensible part of my brain, a definite errm, affinity that I have with the products of the Eastern Bloc, and this is something I can mainly put down to the fact that it has some sort of oddly Proustian effect on me. Maybe the comment on my Wyndham Court post to the effect that 60s Southampton=Alexanderplatz explains it, or Lawrence Miles' contention (numbers 186-90) that 'I feel a close emotional ("emotional"…!) kinship with the architecture of the mid-to-late twentieth century, not exactly because it was the only thing I did get to investigate, but because I tend to think of it as an extension of my own body.' I wouldn't quite say that, but have to admit that on apprehension of a plattenbau housing block or a windswept precinct, it feels like home, which is a rare feeling to we rootless cosmopolitans.