Blue dream: jeans in the USSR (11 photos). What jeans were worn in the USSR Boiled jeans of the 80s
Let me tell you about what was worn in the USSR in the 80s. And, although the fashion of the 80s, in my opinion, cannot be called very feminine and sophisticated, it deserves to be noticed.
The fashion of the 80s is characterized by a riot of colors and, I would say, aggressiveness, and in everything - in clothes, shoes, make-up. Clothing of an inverted triangle silhouette, with wide shoulders, wide belts and belts tied at the waist, outfits are decorated with asymmetrical triangular inserts, countless pockets, batwing sleeves, boat neckline.
But in this post I would like to talk not about the general trends in the clothes of the 80s, but about the iconic things of the 80s in the USSR.
Bright trousers - bananas wide at the top, with folds or gathers at the waist and narrowed down. They were either plain (pink, neon, yellow, light green), or multi-colored (flowered, polka dots, various stains). There were no such things in the store, so I often had to sew. Teak was bought in a fabric store - a fabric for sewing pillowcases, strong enough, mostly pink, blue or light green, usually available, and such trousers were sewn from it.
Overalls.
Clothing with batwing sleeves. This style of sleeve was very popular in those years.
Somewhere since the mid-80s, the fashion has become denim jeans. Of course, they were not widely sold. Boiled jeans could be obtained from the marketers, but it cost a lot of money, and not everyone could afford it.
Therefore, atthe deficit that existed in the late 80sonthings were invented several ways of turning ordinaryjeans (or, as they were called pseudo-jeans - jeans produced in countriessocialist community: "RULA" (Bulgaria), "Tver" (USSR), "Gold Fox" (GDR)or in India) boiled.
To make the pseudo-jeans look like a fashionable "dumpling", they were boiled with bleach, tied with knots to give the fabric a characteristic pattern, boiled with soda and bleach, and then washed in a washing machine along with stones or rolled (a special roller dipped in jeans was rolled over the jeans). "Whiteness" and divorces were obtained - a "rolled" dumpling was obtained).
Later, jeans appeared - "Malvins" - Indian "dumplings", which no longer had to be made on their own.
Very fashionable thing in the 80s were wide belts. The belt could be made of leather (leatherette), or rubber-based, worn on dresses, blouses, sweaters, skirts.
In winter, the ultimate dream was puffy jackets. Dutik jacket (puffed)- a quilted nylon jacket (nylon is thin and soft, almost does not rustle) with insulation, zippers + buttons, bright colors, from lilac to bright yellow tones, the shape seems to be pumped up with air, reminiscent of a skier's suit. They appeared in the Soviet Union in 1984, production was mainly Finnish, there were also more "western" specimens - Japanese.
Women's hats "pipe" or "stocking". Such pipes-stockings were knitted independently in a circular knit on four knitting needles, and combined both a hat and a scarf at once.
And some just knittedheadband.
By the way, these coats were also very popular.
Toward the end of the 80s, such a cult thing appeared as pyramid jeans. These light blue jeans were especially desirable. They were voluminous at the top and narrowed down and tucked at the bottom with a cuff. At the sunset of the USSR, in the legendary light jeans with a camel on the back pocket, literally everyone “cut through”.
Colored tights and fishnet tights.
The fashion of the 80s is characterized by a riot of colors and, I would say, aggressiveness, and in everything - in clothes, shoes, make-up. Clothing of an inverted triangle silhouette, with wide shoulders, wide belts and belts tied at the waist, outfits are decorated with asymmetrical triangular inserts, countless pockets, batwing sleeves, boat neckline.
But in this post I would like to talk not about the general trends in the clothes of the 80s, but about the iconic things of the 80s in the USSR.
Bright trousers - bananas wide at the top, with folds or gathers at the waist and narrowed down. They were either plain (pink, neon, yellow, light green), or multi-colored (flowered, polka dots, various stains). There were no such things in the store, so I often had to sew. Teak was bought in a fabric store - a fabric for sewing pillowcases, strong enough, mostly pink, blue or light green, usually available, and such trousers were sewn from it.
Overalls.
Clothing with batwing sleeves. This style of sleeve was very popular in those years.
Somewhere since the mid-80s, the fashion has become denim jeans. Of course, they were not widely sold. Boiled jeans could be obtained from the marketers, but it cost a lot of money, and not everyone could afford it.
Therefore, atthe deficit that existed in the late 80sonthings were invented several ways of turning ordinaryjeans (or, as they were called pseudo-jeans - jeans produced in countriessocialist community: "RULA" (Bulgaria), "Tver" (USSR), "Gold Fox" (GDR)or in India) boiled.
To make the pseudo-jeans look like a fashionable "dumpling", they were boiled with bleach, tied with knots to give the fabric a characteristic pattern, boiled with soda and bleach, and then washed in a washing machine along with stones or rolled (a special roller dipped in jeans was rolled over the jeans). "Whiteness" and divorces were obtained - a "rolled" dumpling was obtained).
Later, jeans appeared - "Malvins" - Indian "dumplings", which no longer had to be made on their own.
Very fashionable thing in the 80s were wide belts. The belt could be made of leather (leatherette), or rubber-based, worn on dresses, blouses, sweaters, skirts.
In winter, the ultimate dream was puffy jackets. Dutik jacket (puffed)- a quilted nylon jacket (nylon is thin and soft, almost does not rustle) with insulation, zippers + buttons, bright colors, from lilac to bright yellow tones, the shape seems to be pumped up with air, reminiscent of a skier's suit. They appeared in the Soviet Union in 1984, production was mainly Finnish, there were also more "western" specimens - Japanese.
Women's hats "pipe" or "stocking". Such pipes-stockings were knitted independently in a circular knit on four knitting needles, and combined both a hat and a scarf at once.
And some just knittedheadband.
By the way, these coats were also very popular.
Toward the end of the 80s, such a cult thing appeared as pyramid jeans. These light blue jeans were especially desirable. They were voluminous at the top and narrowed down and tucked at the bottom with a cuff. At the sunset of the USSR, in the legendary light jeans with a camel on the back pocket, literally everyone “cut through”.
Colored tights (including white ones) and fishnet tights.
Although Levi Straus received a patent for the production of "strapless work overalls with pockets for a knife, money and watches" back in 1873, jeans reached the USSR only in the middle of the last century, when the Festival of Youth and Students of 1957 was held in Moscow, and in the USSR dudes appeared with black marketers, as well as a fashion for foreign names and clothes. But even then, the people did not immediately appreciate the new outfit, and only when in the early 70s jeans began to be worn everywhere by the Moscow foppish beau monde and the majors mowed like hippies, the denim wave first captured Moscow, and then spread throughout the Union.
Jeans soon became the subject of a cult - almost every person under the age of forty strove to acquire them.
Do you remember your first jeans, those work trousers of American proletarians and other residents of a potential enemy of the USSR? I remember very well. These were Texas jeans, for which my parents did not spare 120 rubles and bought them for my 13th birthday. Damn, how I was happy with this gift! And I don’t care that they were too big for me - their legs had to be cut and narrowed a little. And it didn't matter to me that they were too wide in the waist - it was imperceptible behind the wide leather belt with a large badge.
Another thing was upsetting - they were too new: hard and unworn. And then I did a stupid thing - after listening to someone's advice, I took a brick and began to rub my knees with it to give the jeans a “worn” effect. Well, he finished it to the hole ... “These were your last jeans,” said the father, patting himself on the knee covered with a Wrangler, and he was mistaken.
I was lucky - I spent my childhood in the Crimea and I had many acquaintances of my father and acquaintances of his acquaintances, foreign sailors. Therefore, my parents (and then me) didn’t have to buy jeans from black marketers or go to Moscow, so that (if you’re lucky) after standing in a long queue in Moscow stores, you can buy jeans of an incomprehensible size and “company” (or even worse, Indian or Polish).
I was also saved from the danger of running into fake jeans, which were then in full swing in the underground market of "guild workers" (however, it was difficult not to distinguish them from real ones). Or buy half-legs sealed in a transparent bag from “fartsy” (there was such a “kidok” then). Or wear the first Soviet Tver jeans, which looked like jeans only in color. Soviet craftsmen sometimes bought these jeans at a department store for 30 rubles apiece, then ripped off the label and sewed some fashionable “label” in its place and changed the button. After that, they “pushed” it at the “flea market” for 120 rubles, passing them off as branded ones.
No, my familiar sailors willingly brought jeans of the right size and ordered company (although customs limited the sailors, allowing the import of no more than three pairs of jeans, they managed to smuggle the right amount of them in all sorts of ways). And by “pushing to the left” the heels of the clothes brought by the sailors for sale, one could earn money for new jeans for oneself (at that time in the Union everyone who had such an opportunity was cheating). The prices for jeans were as follows: the initial price on the black market started from 150 rubles. and reached 220 in the Caucasus, but buying them from the seller himself, who brought these jeans from abroad, cost 120-130 rubles without intermediaries.
Therefore, then I had a lot of different jeans: "Levis", "Montana", "Lee", "Rifle" - "classic" and corduroy (black and brown). And there were denim shirts. And the Wrangler denim suit I love (my favorite denim company), which I wore 5 years before the holes and trimming of the sleeves on the jacket and the legs under the shorts. But sometimes, having worn jeans for a year, I sold them for the same price as I took, and sometimes it was a little more expensive.
And the holes on those jeans did not appear where they are on the current ones. For some reason, modern jeans are torn at the knees, and those jeans were primarily torn on the ass and (sorry) in the crotch. Then patches from the same denim or leather were sewn there. And these jeans were worn out to the point where the patches on them became almost more than the “native” fabric.
“But times have changed - they have completely changed” (c) Chizh, and “classic” jeans began to go out of fashion and our lives. First, there were "varenki" and "pyramids" from Turkey, and then (so that they would not be rubbed with a brick) jeans treated with chemicals to look "worn" from Hong Kong and other Asia. But the good old "genies" could still be found and I preferred to wear them.
And then the “ordinary” jeans disappeared altogether, and I only had to dream of getting the “Statovskaya” “jeans” of my youth - classic cut, dark blue, dense, orange stitching, a button like an old coin, and a leather label. Not narrowed and not flared, but straight from the knee, being new - tough like cotton, without any "bells and whistles", not chemically treated to artificial abrasion, but so that they themselves rub in the right places during wear (on the knees and on the ass) pleasant sky-blue color, gradually losing its rigidity. And on the front pockets, so that this wear would give rise to nice folds that would straighten out when you put your hand in for a lighter or money. So that after chewing a match, you can rub your jeans with it and the end of the match would get a blue coating.
Jeans were not just clothes for a Soviet person. It was a symbol of freedom and success. Not everyone could afford to buy branded denim. They saved up for jeans, they speculated, they went to jail for them.
Sailors-festivals
The first jeans appeared in the USSR in the 50s. The official start date of the "denim fever" can be considered 1957, when the International Festival of Youth and Students took place in Moscow. It was then that the Soviet people joined the denim. Since that time, jeans have become not just clothes, they began to symbolize everything that was not in the USSR, they became a simulacrum of the cherished freedom. You could walk in anything, but if you had branded jeans in your wardrobe, it means that life has developed. They fought with jeans, they were banned, for wearing the "capitalist infection" they could be expelled from the institute and from work.
However, these measures only fueled interest in the "forbidden fruit". Sailors, children of diplomats, and pilots were the first to wear jeans. They brought jeans from abroad, often they had to carry them literally on themselves, putting on several pairs under wide trousers. Somehow even Leonid Tyagachev got caught on such "smuggling". Jeans later became associated with hippie culture. Stripes were attached to them, triangles of fabric and strings were sewn into the legs, fashionable flares were made from jeans. It was anti-system, it was cool (although such a word was not yet known in those years).
scuffs
The most important unofficial sign that distinguishes the real "company" from the counterfeit was that the real jeans were worn out from wearing, scuffs formed on it. When they chose jeans, they checked them for firmness with a wet match - they ran it over the fabric. If the match turned blue, it meant that the jeans were real. If not, counterfeit. Of course, this method of verification was frankly wrong, since real denim was not determined by a bad dye at all, but by the fact that denim (from the French "from Nimes") had dyed outer threads, but not inner ones. It is because of this that scuffs appear on jeans from long socks. The longer you wear them, the more valuable and unique they become. Soviet jeans, of course, did not stain matches. GOST standards did not imply the use of cheap dyes. But the "guild workers" for this "quality check" adapted to paint the jeans with easily washable paint, and also learned to specially age the jeans with pumice.
fartsa
Soviet propaganda made the swindlers almost the main enemies of the Soviet trustworthy person. For their activities, they could not only be subjected to public ostracism, but even go to jail. In 1961, the scammers Rokotov and Faibishenko were sentenced to death. One of the charges was "gips speculation". However, forbid, do not forbid, but the black marketers did their job, and in order not to have serious problems with the law, they often did not resell the rare goods, but exchanged them for something else, no less scarce. Barter in kind was not banned in the USSR (unlike foreign exchange transactions).
Fartsovschiki were the first "sharks of the free market" in the USSR. Regular buyers knew them by sight, the traders themselves also "scanned" the crowds in the markets, near hotels, train stations in search of wealthy people. Many well-known businessmen (from Tinkov to Aizenshpis) were engaged in fartsovka jeans. It is interesting that the story of Rokotov and Faibishenko's denim farts has been continued in our days. In memory of them, Rokotov & Fainberg jeans are produced in America.
Varenki
Jeans in the USSR began to be boiled not because people liked to breathe the smell of whiteness, and not even because spectacular divorces were obtained from cooking. The main reason for the washing of jeans was the same deficit. There were not enough "firms" for everyone, and wearing Soviet jeans, which desperately did not want to be worn out and become like foreign denim, was not serious. Then the technology of cooking came to the aid of Soviet teenagers. Its essence is simple. Because of the bleach treatment, there were stains on the jeans.
How it's done:
1) We twist the jeans and tighten them with elastic bands and all kinds of clips (very tightly and often not worth it, because otherwise there will be few divorces).
2) Pour whiteness into warm, but not boiling water (about 1 cup per 5 liters).
3) We lower the twisted jeans into the water and boil for 15-20 minutes.
4) We rinse the newborn "dumplings" several times and admire the work. P.S. Observe safety measures: use gloves and open the windows.
Cult
The most popular brand of jeans in the late USSR was Montana. Although such a label does exist in Germany (registered in 1976), the origin of the Soviet "Montana" is disputed by fashion historians. Most likely, our "Montana" was sewn by the same "guild workers" somewhere in the south of the USSR, and then entered the market. The "chip" of Montana was that they could literally be put in a corner. Also popular brands were "Levis", "Wrangler", "Lee". They were not cheap, from 100 rubles.
Those who did not have enough money for them could buy Indian or Polish jeans. Their quality was different from the "firm", but the pairing of labels reconciled fashionistas with reality. In the late 80s, Soviet jeans "Tver", "Vereya" began to appear on sale, but their quality left much to be desired. However, they were not sewn from denim. But the so-called "self-string" flourished - skilled craftswomen could "pile" almost branded jeans from denim right at home.
Jeans were not just clothes for a Soviet person. It was a symbol of freedom and success. Not everyone could afford to buy branded denim. They saved up for jeans, they speculated, they went to jail for them.
Sailors-festivals
The first jeans appeared in the USSR in the 50s. The official start date of the "denim fever" can be considered 1957, when the International Festival of Youth and Students took place in Moscow. It was then that the Soviet people joined the denim.
Since that time, jeans have become not just clothes, they began to symbolize everything that was not in the USSR, they became a simulacrum of the cherished freedom. You could walk in anything, but if you had branded jeans in your wardrobe, it means that life has developed.
They fought with jeans, they were banned, for wearing the "capitalist infection" they could be expelled from the institute and from work. However, these measures only fueled interest in the "forbidden fruit".
Sailors, children of diplomats, and pilots were the first to wear jeans. They brought jeans from abroad, often they had to carry them literally on themselves, putting on several pairs under wide trousers. Somehow even Leonid Tyagachev got caught on such "smuggling".
Jeans later became associated with hippie culture. Stripes were attached to them, triangles of fabric and strings were sewn into the legs, fashionable flares were made from jeans. It was anti-system, it was cool (although such a word was not yet known in those years).
scuffs
The most important unofficial sign that distinguishes the real "company" from the counterfeit was that the real jeans were worn out from wearing, scuffs formed on it. When they chose jeans, they checked them for firmness with a wet match - they ran it over the fabric. If the match turned blue, it meant that the jeans were real. If not, it's counterfeit.
Of course, this method of verification was frankly wrong, since real denim was not determined by a bad dye at all, but by the fact that denim (from the French "from Nimes") has dyed outer threads, but not inner ones. It is because of this that scuffs appear on jeans from long socks. The longer you wear them, the more valuable and unique they become.
Soviet jeans, of course, did not stain matches. GOST standards did not imply the use of cheap dyes. But the "guild workers" for this "quality check" adapted to paint the jeans with easily washable paint, and also learned to specially age the jeans with pumice.
fartsa
Soviet propaganda made the swindlers almost the main enemies of the Soviet trustworthy person. For their activities, they could not only be subjected to public ostracism, but even go to jail. In 1961, the scammers Rokotov and Faibishenko were sentenced to death. One of the charges was "gips speculation".
However, forbid, do not forbid, but the black marketers did their job, and in order not to have serious problems with the law, they often did not resell the rare goods, but exchanged them for something else, no less scarce. Barter in kind was not banned in the USSR (unlike foreign exchange transactions).
Fartsovschiki were the first "sharks of the free market" in the USSR. Regular buyers knew them by sight, the traders themselves also "scanned" the crowds in the markets, near hotels, train stations in search of wealthy people. Many well-known businessmen (from Tinkov to Aizenshpis) were engaged in fartsovka jeans.
It is interesting that the story of Rokotov and Faibishenko's denim farts has been continued in our days. In memory of them, Rokotov & Fainberg jeans are produced in America.
Varenki
Jeans in the USSR began to be boiled not because people liked to breathe the smell of whiteness, and not even because spectacular divorces were obtained from cooking. The main reason for the washing of jeans was the same deficit. There were not enough "firms" for everyone, and wearing Soviet jeans, which desperately did not want to be worn out and become like foreign denim, was not serious. Then the technology of cooking came to the aid of Soviet teenagers. Its essence is simple. Because of the bleach treatment, there were stains on the jeans.
How it's done:
1) We twist the jeans and tighten them with elastic bands and all kinds of clips (very tightly and often not worth it, because otherwise there will be few divorces).
2) Pour whiteness into warm, but not boiling water (about 1 cup per 5 liters).
3) We lower the twisted jeans into the water and boil for 15-20 minutes.
4) We rinse the newborn "dumplings" several times and admire the work.
P.S. Observe safety measures: use gloves and open the windows.
Cult
The most popular brand of jeans in the late USSR was Montana. Although such a label does exist in Germany (registered in 1976), the origin of the Soviet "Montana" is disputed by fashion historians. Most likely, our "Montana" was sewn by the same "guild workers" somewhere in the south of the USSR, and then entered the market. The "chip" of Montana was that they could literally be put in a corner.
Also popular brands were "Levis", "Wrangler", "Lee". They were not cheap, from 100 rubles. Those who did not have enough money for them could buy Indian or Polish jeans. Their quality was different from the "firm", but the pairing of labels reconciled fashionistas with reality.
In the late 80s, Soviet jeans "Tver", "Vereya" began to appear on sale, but their quality left much to be desired. However, they were not sewn from denim. But the so-called "self-string" flourished - skilled craftswomen could "pile" almost branded jeans from denim directly at home.
