Rags, Uniform and Lipstick

Women’s Clothing Transformations in the War Experiences of Polish Deportees (1939–1946)

Abstract

The study analyzes World War II experiences of hundreds of thousands of women deported after the Soviet aggression against Poland in 1939 and sent to labor camps in Siberia or Kazakhstan. An important novelty of this study is its concentration on the place of women’s clothing transformations along this path, from shoes to lipstick, as they were depicted in literary testimonies of these experiences (memoirs, novels, poetry). The deprivation of any choice in clothing, its reduction to the most basic utilitarian function: to keep warm in Siberia or to provide shade under the Kazakh steppe sun, is contrasted with the vibrant fashion market in pre-war Poland. The testimonies analyzed in the study are juxtaposed with contemporary debates about the importance of clothing “in the theater of social life” and its function as “an instrument for constructing and communicating individual identity”. An important question for future research is whether the war and the system of totalitarian oppression aimed at the destruction of human dignity, as experienced by the authors of the testimonies, completely abolish these meanings and functions, or – on the contrary – emphasize their importance through an element of longing (also traceable in the analyzed texts) for the recovery of the old, not only utilitarian meaning of clothing? No less interesting is a particular direction of these longings: for a uniform as a symbol of regained dignity and identity within a Polish, soldier community. At the same time: longing for “pre-war” functions of the outfit, emphasizing individual beauty, taste, and a possibility of “self-creation”.