Description:
Spring - Summer Fashion Show is a 1953 vintage Hungarian event advertising poster.
Decorative and interesting fashion poster from the early 1950s.
The decade started with the darkest years of Communism ever in Hungary. It was a tough period of dictatory with a massive propaganda with which politics determined every aspect of life. Proper behaviour was expected from individuals whose private life was under the pressure of the party.
The political leadership also glowered at fashion in the 1950s, defined its values ideologically and strictly controlled them. The atmosphere was extremely prudish that time, which resulted in compulsory puritanic norms. Due to the bad economic state of the country and the lack of products and raw materials, ordinary people could only afford ordinary fashion. The only available fashion for the population was characterized by mass production, poor quality, slopwork, greyish shades and terrene colours.
This poster shows exactly the opposite: a beautiful female figure is depicted in a stylish, elegant dress, probably made of a fine fabric. As other fashion propaganda posters captured happy individuals who are cheerful for the new mass-producted, boring clothes they could buy (e. g. Mátyás Sinka: 'Buy slopwork! Cheap, enduring and always beautiful!’, 1950), this kind of propaganda here tries to convince the viewer that socialist fashion is high fashion. In reality, even if some elegant and quality clothes were produced, they were not available, only to be seen on the stage on fashion shows.
It is also remarkable that the representation of this female figure is really different from the usual ones in the period. As this poster didn't adopt to the compulsory features of socialist realist designs of the time, the typical socialist realist prudery is absent as well. Beauty and the emphasis of the female body couldn't really appear on posters of the time, but in some rare cases, there could be slight exceptions, though.
(written by Anita Pásztor)
