Coco Chanel and Socialist Fashion

This essay interrogates the socialist fascination with a Chanel suit in a specific historical period, starting in the late 1950s and lasting throughout the 1970s in six former socialist countries: the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and ex-Yugoslavia. At that point, both socialism and Coco Chanel left their 1920s revolutionary ideals behind and, consequently, embraced sartorial convention. Although Coco Chanel might have seemed an unlikely comrade for her socialist counterparts, she was a natural choice as she was merely perfecting, season after season, the same smart woman’s work suit. On the other hand, while the modernist impulses had been calmed down, their traces were still visible. Both Chanel and socialism wanted to dress woman in a suit that—concerning comfort and a neutral, standardized shape—would make woman equal with man. For socialist women, equality came with a price. The Chanel suit allowed them only a controlled amount of smartness and femininity, and they had to crochet it themselves.