On the Left of Fashion: politics and spectacle in interwar leftist magazines

Bartlett analyses the relationship between the historical Left and fashion in the interwar period, as represented in a host of left-wing illustrated magazines, ranging from Communist party publications – the French Regards(Views), the German Die Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (The Workers Illustrated Newspaper), and the Czech Reflektor(Spotlight) - to Austrian socialist journals Der Kuckuck (The Cuckoo), Die Frau, and Die Unzufriedene (The Discontented), and the French socialist daily Le Populaire - as well as bourgeois publications, leaning towards the Left - such as the French VU and Marianne, and the German UHU. Bartlett explores the ways in which these various journals negotiated their political agendas with the representations and topics of a more varied, and even spectacular modernity, in order to attract the urban working classes, and especially the female urban population.