The Cold War Fashion Showdown | Hacker News Reader

The Cold War Fashion Showdown

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28 pointsbenbreen8 comments

The mystery of writing about fashion is why it matters. Bierce's "a despot whom the wise ridicule and obey," covers it. When you look at it as how people signal their alignment to what they percieve as power, it makes more sense.

The article was essentially about who leads and who follows, and how they could tell, where when russians wore copies of western suits, the writing was on the wall, even if it would be decades before the wall came down.

There is another piece to fashion, where it is a way to assess real desire. There are opinion polls and things people lie about, and then there are what they actually do. Envy for american fashions could have (and ultimately did) contribute to erosion of the soviet edifice. I remember hearing stories about how in the 80's, the vintage shops we all liked in the punk scene had made money by getting used jeans here to ship to Germany so they could be smuggled into Eastern Germany.

Turns out the stories weren't apocryphal either, a transcript: https://www.businessinsider.com/brought-to-you-by-podcast-bt...

Such interesting times.

>” where when russians wore copies of western suits, the writing was on the wall…”

I don’t think that’s quite right.

I think it’s more a reflection of the despot being dead (Stalin) and being free of that shackle.

The UK and North America used to follow French fashion (hats, dresses, textiles, etc) that didn’t mean the French were winning (be it economic, cultural or otherwise) aristocracy just thought they had forward fashion sense.

On that last point, the House of Bourbon would probably disagree. They had rulers all over the world, and UK aristocrats adopting their fashion was arguably a nod to their ascendency, and as a way to distinguish themselves with with signals of the global and exotic.

After the revolution/terror, french fashion was out until the rise of the industrial middle class. It was during/after the restoration that French brands like Charvet and Hermés were founded (c. 1830's) and still later, Louis Vuitton, and they once again became ascendent on the global stage. Themes in fashion are a pretty good macro signal for where growth is going.

Somewhere Ortega y Gasset, writing in the 1920s or 1930s, said that the British had the worst-dressed men in Europe, simply because they had matters of real importance to deal with.

All workers in that era wore these working clothes:

https://www.tifantex.sk/fotky39121/fotos/_vyrp11_35pracovne-...

We called them "montérky". They were terrible. They didn't even had belt loops, you couldn't put any gear on you, as if they were designed to lower the productivity. The only thing they were good for was standing around with hands in your pockets. That's why communism failed.

In the '80s, the western countries were terrified of Japan because they feared they would soon develop the technology for trousers to have two belts. The productivity lead would have been unassailable.

Is that why one isn't supposed to wear a belt and suspenders, for fear of overproduction?

There was a vintage Wendy's ad in the 1980s that spoofed just this lack of "fashion" sense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CaMUfxVJVQ

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