Collisions between the Fashion Industry, Media and Politics. The framing of fashionable femininity in Soviet Lithuania’s magazine Tarybinė Moteris and Post-Soviet Lithuania’s fashion blog StiliuSOS through political and technological perspectives

Abstract

Collisions between the fashion industry, technology and politics undergo constant transformations that can be visible in the content of fashion media. This thesis is oriented towards Soviet and Post-Soviet Lithuania’s fashion industry and its media through technological and political perspectives. These two distinct periods encompass divergent political contexts that had and still have a visible effect on the country’s society and the fashion industry itself. This study reflects the collision between media, fashion and politics by analysing the headlines and images of a former Lithuanian magazine Tarybinė Moteris and a contemporary online fashion blog StiliuSOS. In order to investigate the latter media sections beyond their direct meaning and to observe political and societal alterations, a semiotic approach is used. The results show that the images and headlines in Tarybinė Moteris reflect the prevailing deficiency and political stagnation in Soviet Lithuania, a peculiar civil disobedience and restrictions over Soviet Lithuanian women’s self-expression. During the occupation, the magazine could be used for two main reasons: as a tool of propaganda or as a tool of resistance against the Soviet regime. Also, the results demonstrate that Soviet Lithuania’s women were still trying to embrace their fashionable femininity by making their own clothes that signifies their uniqueness and idiosyncrasy in comparison to Western fashion, which is based on mass-production and planned obsolescence. Hence, StiliuSOS show that an opportunity to purchase in capitalist society needs to be guided by fashion media. The results demonstrate that capitalism creates not only an option, but also an obligation to express oneself through consumerism that forms the capitalist ideology. Furthermore, both politics and media technology have a visible effect on the fashion industry and its development. Technological changes are visibly effected by societal and political transformations, which means that technology is not autonomous, but is also dependent on cultural and political factors. This study shows that fashion media and the fashion industry itself can be used as a beneficial research material in analysing political and societal processes.