What is it about?
Romanian society between the two World Wars constantly moved between opening itself to Western modernity and closing itself to protect itself from anything foreign. Bucharest, Romania's capital, reflected this duality as a border space between East and West, modernity and tradition, austerity and glamour. This paper explores the dynamic negotiation between restriction (Monitorul Oficial, the Official Gazette of Romania) and expansion (Calea Victoriei, Bucharest's most famous boulevard, at the capital's heart, the best place for walking, shopping, having fun and, most of all, showing oneself to the world. Women's fashion is an important lens to filter the story of interwar Bucharest because it envelops everything connected to the fashion system, women's stories and aspirations, as well as social, economic, ideologic, cultural and artistic histories.
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Why is it important?
This article shows how, in a darkening time of Romanian history, women used fashion as a means of self-assertion and a breath of fresh air. As the current online and offline interactions tend to veer towards the extremes and promote autocracy politically, culturally and creatively, interwar Bucharest women's fashion negotiating on the contraction-expansion spectrum can be a blueprint for potential solutions in the present and future beyond the current situation in Romania, Europe, and beyond.
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This page is a summary of: From
Monitorul Oficial
to Calea Victoriei: Decoding 1930s Bucharest through Women’s Fashion, Journal of Romanian Studies, April 2023, Liverpool University Press,
DOI: 10.3828/jrns.2023.3.
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