A tale of two centuries: The körtti movement and dress in battles over Finnish politics and identities

This paper looks into the transforming sartorial styles of a certain Christian Protestant revivalist movement in Finland in and around two very specific historical moments: independence from Russia in 1917; and 2017, when the Marriage Act was amended such that same-sex marriage become legal. The analysis covers crucial periods before and after the independence: late 19th and early 20th century, when Russia sought to tighten its control over autonomous Finland, and the Finnish intelligentsia organised to resist such attempts, through the civil war of 1918, to the turbulent right/left-divided years of the 1920s and 1930s. Then, the liberalisation of the körtti movement from the 1960s and 1970s onwards, and the effect of this upon the debates and battles over the equal marriage law before and after the law came into effect is discussed.

I show how through changing histories, changing garments have the capacity to play key roles. By focussing on a particular movement through different times, it is shown how groups that go under the same name may be fundamentally different from their historical predecessors, how they may yet recognise a similar kind of garment even if they attach different kind of associations to it, and how new garments are sometimes required in order to communicate new positions of movements and individuals. For analyses of garments and cultural positions, this underlines the necessity to think of certain ‘times’ as part of a continuum, in which both changes and continuities in dress play out and influence socio-political relations.