Foreign News: Mode for the Masses

Drapes of eggshell rayon silk, fully a verst of it, hung from the ceiling to the floor. Behind the table stood a large portrait of Stalin, edged in red. There was no soft music, no suave couturiers. The mannequins (rather plump) sported no fancy make-up or nifty hairdos. Commissars, scholars, artists faced the circular platform. Paulina Semionovna Zhemchuzhina (Madame Molotov), head of the Soviet Cosmetics Trust, was there, chatting brightly with Textiles Vice Commissar Dora Moissevna Khazan. In Moscow’s House of Fashions, tailors and dressmakers of the state were displaying what the well-dressed tovarish should wear in 1946.

Soviet styles had always leaned to the practical rather than the pretty. But now Premier Stalin himself wanted Russians to look as smart as Westerners. The Red Army men who had seen the slinky silks and fancy figures abroad approved warmly.

The models stalked back & forth Though many of the 274 designs still stressed utility, a distinct shift to the sophistication of New York and Paris was perceptible. One fetching outfit might have come straight off the floor of a Paris salon—a form-fitting dinner gown in cool grey with an austere neckline and sweeping sleeves caught in narrow cuffs.

In honor of the Red Army, coats and suits struck a martial note with padded shoulders and belted backs, but (and this was new) dressy hats helped soften the severity of line. Skirts were slim, with kickpleats back and front.

Male styles stayed dourly conservative. In 1946, as in 1945 and before that, men will wear sack coats without vests, topped by cloth caps in unrelieved dark shades. Hats, when worn, will be high-crowned, narrow-brimmed.

The experts made their choices. In due course the favored designs will be produced for the millions by the Commissariat of Light Industry.

From the ruins of bombed Berlin la haute couture was peeping boldly too. In draughty salons along what was once the elegant Kurfürstendamm, bright-eyed mannequins modeled the first designs after the defeat. They were almost as frothy as France’s after victory. The shortage of materials was a handicap, but gold lame, for instance, could be made to do for both cocktail gowns and housecoats (see cut). For Berlin’s new army of cyclists there was a snappy yellow-&-black suit with a matching belt in canary suede.