Grandchildren of Chattanooga

Saturday evening in one of the Moscow bars. The visitors drink lazily and look at each other with a bored look. Suddenly, young people in elegant short-sleeved jackets, wide trousers, tight ties burst into the hall with noise and laughter; the girls are wearing fitted dresses of bright colors. The DJ smiles broadly, puts on a wide-brimmed hat, and puts on the song You never can tell Chuck Berry, to which John Travolta and Uma Thurman danced in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. Jackets and dresses throw themselves into a dance - they dance manneredly and a little ridiculously. At first, they are looked at with surprise. Then someone shouts out: "Style-a-a-gi!" In 20 minutes the whole bar is dancing.

Styling is the brightest hobby of Russian youth in recent years. After the release of the film of the same name by Valery Todorovsky at the end of December, parties began to be held all over the country “under the dudes”. A variety of people come - students, managers, bankers, artists and businessmen. Shops buy 1950s-style clothing collections, old ladies at flea markets lament that they are giving away “a real stylish thing,” and ask for a lot of money for neckerchiefs and butterfly glasses. Dozens of sites and forums have appeared on the Internet for those who want to become like the heroes of a popular film.

FORGOTTEN OLD

Soviet dudes appeared in the late 1940s and looked up to the Western way of life - more precisely, to their idea of ​​​​it. They listened to jazz, and then rock and roll. The dude's anthem was "Train to Chattanooga" from Sun Valley Serenade. Records were obtained from the black market, they dressed as they thought they dressed in New York, danced as they should have danced in Los Angeles, and spoke in a slang that was vaguely reminiscent of English. They denied Soviet social foundations and moral norms, protested against uniformity with their appearance and shocked those around them. The authorities called dudes henchmen of capitalism, rounded up them and arrested them for banned records.

The film Stilyagi only spurred a movement that has long been overdue in society, says Irina Getmanova, a fashion theorist and specialist in youth subcultures. She is sure that such a need appeared in the youth environment a few years ago: the goths are too pessimistic, the emo philosophy is “suitable only for the smallest”, punks and hippies are a little boring and outdated. “And dudes are something that can captivate many,” says Getmanova. “Joyful, light, gives everyone the opportunity to show their individuality.”

Sergey Mikheev, art director of the Blur bar, where the very party with the sudden appearance of dudes took place, says that he didn’t invent anything on purpose. “Our regulars themselves suggested such an idea. For a week we composed outfits, selected music, and I only helped to find a suitable DJ, ”he says.

The party was in full swing. More and more strange characters squeezed into the small hall: a young man in a suit, but without a shirt - with suspenders over his naked body, a young man with a white handkerchief tied around his head. “As everyone imagines a dude, he dressed up. And how do they know? Until recently, many have not heard such a word at all,” explained art director Mikheev.

Denis, a short, stocky young man with sideburns, “danced” to the Newsweek correspondent and shouted in her ear: “Look at my jacket! Real! 50s. It even smells! And he began to poke the correspondent in the nose with his sleeve. "A tie! You touch it, it's real silk! And boots, what boots do I have?! I have been looking for them for six months, - Denis did not let up. “Now look at my wife’s dress!” With a rehearsed gesture, he pointed to a blonde with a high hairdo and a red dress with black polka dots.

Denis's grandfather was a dude, so he can talk for a long time and in detail about the ideology, traditions and habits of real dudes, but 20-year-old student Lisa is just one of those who first learned about them from a recent film. The girl spent an hour and a half to style her hair in a complex hairstyle. She chose the outfit in one of the Moscow shopping centers. “I printed pictures from the Internet and looked for something similar,” she says. “The sellers were not even surprised, they said that I was not the first one.” I signed up for rock and roll classes: “If you don’t know how to dance, then it’s pointless to go to such parties, you won’t portray anything without certain skills.”

Wanting to portray more and more. And not only in metropolitan clubs. Alik Ansher, art director of the Novosibirsk jazz club Truba, who now hosts weekly “And I will lie under a dude” party (similar to the Soviet slogan of the time of the fight against dudes “I will not lie under a dude”), says that with every more and more people come to the club at once.

FUN AND HONEST

Styling is the romanticization and idealization of the beautiful, the dudes themselves explain. Dress beautifully, move beautifully, speak beautifully. But unlike fans of glamor, they treat themselves with irony. It doesn’t matter to modern stylists how much an outfit costs or what labels it has - the main thing is that it looks good and attracts attention. Stilyagi is a kind of anti-glamor movement, a kind of protest against the accepted dress code.

“Paphos clubs where blondes with long legs hang out are already boring, rave and techno are tired,” explains Irina Getmanova. - Youth wants a holiday, lightness, joy. The dudes dressed up beautifully, danced, kissed and fled. The ideology of dudes corresponds to the most current trends: to be different from everyone else, to refuse to take yourself too seriously, to pay attention to original things and be interested in retro.

Muscovite Tatyana, a modern fashionista, says that lately girls in clubs have been constantly approaching her and asking where she can find the same dress or how to learn how to dance the twist. Tatyana's mother was an exemplary Komsomol member, and her father was a dude and the king of the dance floor. Now in his 70s, he still “dresses like a real dandy,” says the girl. “The shirts are colorful, the cufflinks are unthinkable. Probably, I got an interest in this subculture from him, ”she says. True, she came to the dudes relatively recently: before that, Tatyana went through almost all modern youth informal movements: she talked with punks, rastamans, goths, hippies and bikers.

Tatyana works as an accountant. Her husband Anton, also a dude, is an official. They go to work in ordinary clothes, and in the evening they put on bright and unusual things. To “live like a dude”, you need a lot of free time. They are constantly hunting for household items of those times. “Recently we got a siphon!” Anton says proudly. It is especially difficult to get fashion magazines of the 50s, according to which Tatyana then makes patterns. She mostly sews her own clothes. “You can find interesting dresses in vintage stores. But most often they don’t fit my figure, then the standards were completely different, besides, they need to be worn with underwear of that era, and it’s not so easy to get it, ”explains Tatyana.

The couple are somewhat concerned about the massive interest in the style theme. “I don’t want style to turn into consumer goods,” they admit. After all, dudes initially opposed everything mass: in the 50s of the last century - the gray collars of Soviet society, in our time - the "digital world". The word “digital” is the only thing that has replenished the slang of dudes: this is how they call everything unnatural, standard and boring.

“Don’t think, we are normal people and we don’t reject progress,” Anton laughs. - We just prefer to take pictures on film, we use ICQ and social networks only on business. We prefer lively, and most importantly, beautiful communication.

Ilya Moiseenko, showman and leader of the Kings of Twist group, explains the general fashion for dudes: people are tired of corporate culture and pop music, they want something real, honest and fun.

True, Getmanova is sure that for many of the neo-styles, simply “fun” is enough, few will chase the “real” and listen to Elvis Presley, watch the “Sun Valley Serenade” or wear authentic 1950s clothes. “Still, this is too incomprehensible for young people,” she says. - Rather, they will choose what corresponds to their idea of ​​who dudes are. So let's see what happens." The main thing is that it doesn’t work out, as in Todorovsky’s Stilyagi. One of the heroes went to America and, returning, said with sadness in his voice: “You see ... There are no dudes there.”