Crafting Illusions: Fashion as a Means of Decoding Social and Cultural History in Interwar Bucharest

This paper proposes an overview of the intertwined streams of cultural, political, economic and social aspects that made up the fashion-consuming women's interwar Bucharest, through the scope of fashion studies. For this, I will outline the extended methodological and conceptual scope which defines fashion studies in correlation with historical analysis. This wide range of research includes cultural anthropology, semiotics, sociology, cultural, gender and identity studies, adding to the technical, artistic, and philosophical implications already popular in pursuits of costume history. My paper will be centred around the idea of crafting illusions. I will use the word “craft” both in its magical and metaphysical sense, as in “witchcraft”, but also suggesting all aspects of craftsmanship. Therefore, my study deals with the conception, production, dissemination, consumption, and interpretation of fashionability. Drawing from this double-meaning, crafting illusions means invoking an idealised reality of prosperity, success, and power, which can hide a less glamorous reality. It can also be weaponised, from social control to building a national image. I will thus use the methods of fashion studies to interpret how the elegant Bucharester myth was constructed in an era of great upheavals. I aim to illustrate the fashion studies methodological and conceptual frameworks as a valid method of research, which has already been recognised as such in Western academia as a full-fledged discipline blending media, design, humanities, science, marketing, and politics. I will juxtapose the images seen in fashionable touristic spaces, such as Calea Victoriei, to the grim realities of a world recovering from past trauma, soon to delve into a new disaster. This will allow a snapshot of interwar Romania’s complexity through the lens of fashion.