Word: socialistics
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...1980s East Germany, there was a group of independent fashion designers, photographers, models and stylists who refused to play along with the socialist regime's excessive egalitarianism. They called themselves "the Mob" and, rejecting the notion that you had to live in the free Western world to make something happen, their confident motto was "New York is where we are." The young fashion designers in the group created vibrant, often unwearable designs that were the opposite of the official fashion industry's ideal of clothing for the masses. From July 4 to Sept. 13, a new exhibition at Berlin...
...style of East German fashion's mainstream. Models in colorful, voluminous outfits made out of shower curtains and hospital intestine bags were strutting the catwalk, spraying sparkling wine and foamy shower soap into the audience. "The pressure of standardization, forcing people into line - we were totally against all those socialist diseases," says filmmaker Marco Wilms, a former model whose documentary about the G.D.R.'s avant-garde fashion scene, Comrade Couture, was recently released in Germany. "We just wanted to be ourselves...
...Although most of the East German fashion underground's protagonists didn't consider themselves political, their celebration of individuality and ostentatious narcissism certainly was. The Mob was not afraid to play around with socialist symbols, such as the hammer and sickle, or to use Russian army wear as the basis for its designs. Doing so was not without risk in a country where the secret police would ban you from Alexanderplatz, the East German capital's central square, for nothing more than wearing a little glitter spray in your hair. (See the Green Design...
Looked at one way, the results of the European parliamentary elections, held across the European Union's 27 member states last week, can be seen as a continent-wide rejection of the center left and an embrace of the center right - with some far-right candidates doing well, too. Socialist and social democratic parties were badly beaten, despite the global economic crisis and misgivings in Europe about unbridled capitalism. "Voters do not want socialism, they want a market system that works," reckoned Corien Wortmann-Kool, who was re-elected for the Dutch center-right CDA party...
...there was little comfort for the left elsewhere in Europe. Although President Nicolas Sarkozy is deeply unpopular in France, his UMP party saw its vote rise to 27.7% from the 16.6% it garnered at the last European elections in 2004, while the Socialist Party slumped from 28.9% in 2004 to 16.5% this time. In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's center-right coalition surged 6.9% to secure 35% of the vote, ahead of the center-left opposition at 26%. Spain's governing Socialists slipped 4% to 38.5%, behind the opposition Popular Party at 42.2%, while Portugal's ruling Socialists suffered...