National and Rational Dress: Catholics Debate Female Fashion in Lithuania, 1920s–1930s

Abstract

The debates about female fashion in the new Republic of Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s saw papal representatives, bishops, leading public intellectuals, and members of Catholic youth movements argue about deep décolletés and short skirts. In this predominantly Catholic country, objections made against modern fashion may initially look like a conservative stand against modern developments. Studying more closely the debate around women's fashion as it developed in a particular subset of the Catholic population in Lithuania—educated youth in the Ateitis Catholic student association, this article examines the interconnected arguments that were woven together to evaluate what women should wear in interwar Lithuania and shows that Catholics in this northeastern European country aimed to create a modern national and rational woman. At issue were not just Catholic moral norms but also national identity and the challenges posed by mass consumer culture. The new ideal being proposed was a modern Catholic female intelligentsia, a gender ideal that embraced the opportunities offered in the first decades of the twentieth century, such as suffrage, education, urban living, more active participation in civic life, while retaining more conservative moral norms, questioning consumer culture, and debating woman's nature and mission.