Glamour Labor in the USSR

Abstract

Unlike contemporary fashion models who benefit from powerful tools of self-branding and self-promotion such as the Internet and social media, Soviet mannequins in the 1960s and 1970s operated within a centralized and strictly controlled system of fashion institutions. Nonetheless, their work required self-fashioning, and despite limited resources and a lack of guidance, they managed to cultivate their allure and project their images beyond the confines of the organizations they worked for. This article examines these often-neglected aspects of glamour labor by analyzing the account of the mannequin Valentina Chernova (Burlakova) through the concept of glamour proposed by the cultural historian Stephen Gundle. Chernova’s experiences at the Leningrad Dom Modelei challenge the popular stereotypes depicting fashion in the USSR as featureless and uniform, and reveal that Soviet mannequins were valued for their unique beauty, charisma, and creative input.