Our punks are pale toadstools
Two exhibitions in the Big Manege, which opened as part of the Fashion and Style in Photography festival, are dedicated to the most avant-garde trends of the last forty years. But if the exhibition of British photography “Look at me” describes avant-garde ideas from the inside, then the special projects of domestic photographers only copy them from the outside.

It cannot be said that the exhibition “Look at Me” is a revelation for the Russian public. Just as in Pushkin’s times we had our dandies who grew long fingernails and suffered from spleen, all subsequent products of British eccentricity found their adherents in Russia.
We had and have our dudes, our hippies, our punks, our Tishinka and our freaks. (One of them, the famous Bikapo, once again delighted the audience by appearing at the opening day wearing a hat with a feather, made from a saucepan, and bare feet.) However, all this motley informal fashion was practically not reflected either in the design idea or in photography , and especially not in fashion magazines. If you don't count the short burst of avant-garde fashion during "perestroika".
It's not the same in England. English designers and photographers managed to do the almost impossible: turn the marginalized into the mainstream, social protest into the fashion industry, and eccentricity into a national style.
Today, few people would think that the pin piercing the face of model Devon (photo by Nick Knight, production by Alexander McQueen) is nothing more than a quote from the famous leaflet issued by the punk group Sex pistols, on which Queen Elizabeth was depicted with " with his mouth fastened with a pin. The more radical the ideas of “street” fashion were, the more willingly magazines adopted them. The photography of real London “characters” at the exhibition is often difficult to distinguish from magazine illustrations that imitate documentary paparazzi footage captured in nightclubs and squats.
Domestic fashion illustrated publications are still very far from ironizing bourgeoisness and respectability: the “Victorian era” in Russia has not yet ended. Only youth magazines try to imitate the humorous and aggressive English style. But, like any imitation, these attempts look paler than the original. Photographers make excuses: “We would like their money,” and editors complain about the conservatism of Russian advertisers. Nevertheless, it is to these publications that we owe the fact that today fashionable news from London reaches Moscow no later than New York. Perhaps, in the end, thanks to their efforts, a new generation of designers and photographers will grow up, which will create new ideas and styles with Russian names.
MILENA J-ORLOVA

The festival, supported by Philip Morris and Moscow City Bank, will be held every two years, interspersed with a photo biennale (the 3rd will take place in April 2000). The exhibitions are open until May 10.

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 70 dated April 24, 1999, p. 7

Authors:

Milena Orlova

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