Due to a series of not so for­tu­itous events ( the Great Octo­ber Social­ist Rev­o­lu­tion of 1917, the First World War, the over­all run­down of the young Soviet coun­try) women never had their needs attended to prop­erly. Under­wear was made, first and fore­most, for the work­ing class with no pref­er­en­tial treat­ment for the females so women had no choice other than to wear those sex­less gar­ments.  This is prob­a­bly the sad­dest part of the Soviet history.

These mini slip dresses were often the only specif­i­cally designed female under­gar­ment  (even the bras were made in one size up to mid-1930s).  They were meant to ensure a bet­ter fit for the dresses, to pro­vide an extra layer in win­ter and, for many women, it was a hygienic neces­sity: as the bath or shower did not fea­ture in every house­hold, some­times wash­ing up would hap­pen only once in a few days.

The rumours have it that after the war some lucky women were brought the tro­phy slips from Ger­many — and wore them out as evening dresses. It might as well be an urban leg­end, but for some rea­son I would per­son­ally tend to believe it.

Accord­ing to some doc­u­ment circa 1940s, the san­i­tary norms were that each woman should own at least two sets of under­wear which she would not wear for longer than 5 – 7 days.

The mag­a­zi­ne­sof those times did not offer fash­ion­able solu­tions: quite the con­trary, they tried to lift the spirit of women by includ­ing some not so sub­tle pro­pa­ganda arti­cles. “A har­mo­niously devel­oped per­son as a builder of the com­mu­nis­tic future has a rich inner world, as well phys­i­cal health, high moral­ity and culture”

There were never any fit­ting rooms, as bras were con­sid­ered to be a hygiene item and fit­ting was not allowed, nor exchange was pos­si­ble. Con­sid­er­ing that the size range was really lim­ited (say, small, medium and large), being a woman wasn’t easy. How­ever, the diy fans were really doing it them­selves – any fash­ion book would have a detailed tuto­r­ial on how to sew a bra.  Those who suc­ceeded at this fil­i­gree activ­ity were doing it for friends and friends of friends, as a nice sec­ondary income. The fab­rics would be plain (not stretchy!) cot­ton with buttons.

Usu­ally the new mod­els and designs were approved once every five years as high as the min­is­te­r­ial level. That was the main decision-making time: even the num­ber of but­tons had to gain consent.

When the prob­lem with bras what some­what solved (or at least min­imised), tights and stock­ings were still in huge demand. It is truly unbe­liev­able who the coun­try, whose engi­neers could envis­age send­ing peo­ple into the outer space, could not come up with some­thing resem­bling lycra to pro­vide women with elas­tic tights! The Soviet stock­ings were made of plain cot­ton and were of black and nude colour. Often the sup­ply in shops was so min­i­mal that women had to sew stock­ings to a pair of underpants

In a mod­ern movie East-West the main female char­ac­ter fails her mis­sion as she gets rec­og­nized as a Russ­ian – the guard notices her truly hor­ri­ble stock­ings! More­over, know­ing how frag­ile a pair of stock­ings is and how dif­fi­cult it is to find it in shops, Russ­ian beau­ties would share tips with each other on how to pro­long the life of this del­i­cate gar­ment: the sug­ges­tions to freeze it before wear or mend the holes with nail war­nish. Noth­ing works, of course, but it was well worth trying.

By 1970, the tex­tile indus­try had allowed a range of nine sizes for bras, which was more than wel­come. How­ever, the styles were still, well, behind, even by the most mod­est of stan­dards. Another leg­end goes that when the French actor and singer Yves Mon­tand came to Moscow and saw the Russ­ian under­wear, he laughed so hard he couldn’t stop for a while — and then bought the whole lot to dis­play in Paris later. The exhi­bi­tion, under­standibly, was pop­u­lar with the French and not so pop­u­lar with the Russ­ian author­i­ties, so the rela­tion­ships became tense.

The uni­sex of the com­mu­nism epoch would not allow any beach wear up to 1970s: before that the swim­suits were either hand­made (even knit­ted) or women had to wear the under­gar­ments to the beach.

The most impor­tant mes­sage here is prob­a­bly that “Soviet” is not an ide­ol­ogy, it is about the planned econ­omy (badly planned, unfor­tu­nately) and hence the affected every day lives of reg­u­lar peo­ple who had no access to the for­eign, imported, pretty things.  Any item, be it a TV set or a bra, should just solely serve its pur­pose, and the frills are not nec­es­sary at all.

Related posts:

1. Cat­walk Mod­els With No Under­wear On. Haute Cou­ture Soviet Style.
2. Sign­boards of Soviet Stores
3. The Fash­ions of the War Times
4. Soviet Brands: The Scent Of Com­mu­nism. Part 1 of 2
5. Chris­t­ian Dior in Moscow: a Fleet­ing Sense of Happiness