Volodymyr Zelensky became president of Ukraine in a landslide election in April 2019. Widely acclaimed for his unusual election strategy and populist rhetoric, Zelensky rebranded himself to disassociate from being a comedian and a trickster politician. Using Zelensky’s self-fashioning, I examine several strategies in his fashion choices to convey messages about gender and masculinity. His clothing, body language and behaviour tell a story about an uneasy relationship in Ukraine between the competing narratives of the nation and its military history and present. I argue that Zelensky’s clothing signals a sharp turn away from his previous pre- and post-election rhetoric of civic secularism and peaceful nationalism, as well as his emphasis on belonging. His use of military fatigues and traditional Ukrainian clothing demonstrates that he adapted his message to underscore Ukraine’s culture and history, while also drawing attention to the country’s militarization. At the same time, the casual style of dress he adopted, his open emotional expressions and his body language show a more contemporary and non-hegemonic version of masculinity.

This article outlines the history and significance of Craftivism in Eastern Europe. Using two case studies of artists it investigates the use of the craft language in Eastern Europe and its usability for activism. Do-It-Yourself culture, of which Craftivism is part, rejects the commercialism, gender norms and the conventional lifestyle in the Global North. Use of crafts as a language of political and social struggle allows to convey the message in a less confrontational but nevertheless very pertinent way. The craftivism is a successful language for the feminist political struggle in the Eastern Europe.

The article examines how fashion assists in emphasizing heteronormativity in the musical film Hipsters (2008). The film is about the first countercultural phenomenon in the Soviet Union – Stiliagi. Predominantly men, these young people adapted different styles of dress, language, behaviour and dance that they felt was closely copying the styles of western cultures such as Teddy Boys. While the movement that started in the late 1940s and continued to the early 1960s included heterosocial behaviour, the film that presumably recreates the affective feeling of the culture distorts the history to spotlight heterosexuality and the search for individual freedom. It argues that given that historically and currently, the association between fashion and masculinity in the Russian culture is understood as effeminate, the film had to create clear heteronormative relationships between the male and female protagonists while emphasizing fashion and consumption. The article demonstrates how the film works within post-Soviet ideology by comparing the use of fashion in the film and the historical data about the actual Stiliagi movement of the 1950s. By negating the heterosocial and heterosexual relationship, the film created an artificial understanding of the Soviet culture. It follows the official ideological doctrine of creating nostalgia for the simpler yet somewhat stifled life in the Soviet Union without attracting the audience’s attention to the repressions of the post-Stalin Soviet Union.

Alla Myzelev’s contribution analyzes representations of the counter-cultural Soviet Stiliagi movement and foregrounds its importance for shifts in conceptions and understandings of masculinity in the post-WW II period. The Stiliagi’s bodies emerge as contradictorily inscribed and signifying in her analyses: the majority of media representations render their bodies and style as deviant and condemn the movement for undermining Soviet masculine norms and values; yet, the Stiliagi’s self-representation conceives of their bodies as urban, fashionable, and cultured. This article shows how the movement broadened the scope of possible gender expressions, and, drawing on a broad variety of cultural material, it also illustrates that this increased flexibility did not extend to sexual plurality, as the ‘specter of homoeroticism’ that haunts this—mostly male—counter-movement is consistently sublimated in all forms of Stiliagi representations.

This article examines the subcultural Soviet movement Stiliagi from its appearance in 1948 to the early 1960s. The movement created countercultural fashion styles for men for the first time since the Communist Revolution in 1917. I argue that the movement and the lifestyle that were associated with it contributed to a change in the representation of masculinity in the Soviet Union by introducing a type of urban man interested in fashion and contemporary music. Stiliagi is represented in literary works and memoirs, along with the satirical press of the time. This study uses these sources along with personal interviews conducted by the author to show the full range of the movement. Using Connell's notion of hegemonic masculinity, I look at Stiliagi as a type of alternative masculinity and argue that the fashion style and adherence to the movement were used strategically to navigate the dangerous landscape of Soviet ideological reality.

An advocate for urban artists since a young age, Marine Tanguy launched MTArt Agency in 2015. MTArt is the first talent agency for visual artists worldwide. MTArt Agency was behind the largest public art painting in the world: the project of Saype in Paris supported by 30 companies including the Eiffel Tower and the Guardian Media Group.

Textiles, Community and Controversy: The Knitting Map is a collection of papers dedicated to one artwork — The Knitting Map — envisaged as a conceptual, community-based project that took a year to ...

Using information interviews conducted with Russian-speaking men living in Toronto and vicinity this article interrogates the understanding of fashion among immigrants from former Soviet Union and Russia. Using a hypothesis that Russian-speaking men conceptualize their male identity differently from both their Canadian counterparts and Russian men living in Russia this article investigates how fashion choices affect negotiation of identity of these men in Canada. Using art historical methodologies, historical analysis and qualitative research I look at the interviewee’s contributions as a reflection of masculinity in transitions assuming that the forming of masculine identity is a constantly changing process. In each society the hegemonic model of masculinity categorizes groups of men in relation to each other through ‘normalizing’ the definition of masculinity and defining its standards and proper manifestations. This is particularly true of societies where the military culture has an increased presence and an important role to play. Contemporary Russia epitomizes the commanding and rigid nature of the masculinist regime where hegemonic masculinity is firmly established and thoroughly institutionalized.