Dur­ing the Soviet times fash­ion was first and fore­most, an instru­ment of pro­pa­ganda of hard work atti­tudes and edu­ca­tion of good taste. There­fore the way peo­ple were dressed was very strictly reg­u­lated – just like any­thing else, fash­ion had to be “planned” and “approved”.

Offi­cially the most pop­u­lar designs were the clas­sic ones. Not only were they set out to pro­mote the good taste of the clean cut and reserved ele­gance, it was also a very con­ve­nient way of pro­duc­tion:  once designed and approved, the clas­sic dresses and suits were not as respon­sive to changes in the trends and hence inex­pen­sive to main­tain. The often boring-looking pieces of cloth­ing were labelled as never going out of fash­ion and pro­moted as “eter­nally youthful”.

Eter­nally youth­ful, isn’t it?

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