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Off the Wall: Fashion from East Germany, 1964 to 1980
by (Editor: Bloomsbury)
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (2005-11-15)
ISBN: 159691047X
EAN: 9781596910478
Dewy Decimal #: 645
Hardcover: 96 pages
Release Date: 2005-10-13
SKU: C061QAX
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comments: Clean unmarked pages. Clean unmarked cover. Bumped Corners. 100% satisfaction guaranteed. All orders include an e-Book about starting your own Internet Business in PDF format. FREE Domestic DELIVERY CONFIRMATION! We ship daily Mon-Sat and will let you know when your item has shipped along with your e/DC number. [HI, AK, PR, VI, GUAM, SAIPAN & West Coast customers, please use Expedited Shipping, otherwise it may take longer than the estimated 14 business days.] Items are from a smoke free and air conditioned environment.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
East Germany may be most remembered for the activities of the Stasi, but now, for the first time, its secret short flirtation with fashion is revealed.
For a short period the notoriously repressive bureaucrats who ran East Germany decided to bring some color into their otherwise drab lives. They commissioned two photographers, hired St. Pauli Girls as models, and chose the locations that represented their greatest socialist achievements—oil refineries, worker canteens, concrete office buildings, airports—to shoot their daring photographs. The result: cunning and original uses for tartan, little hats and jaunty caps, bold florals, and more swatches of pumpkin, tomato, and lemon yellow than you might find at a country fair. For years, these alarming examples of a zeitgeist unleashed have been hidden from Western eyes…but not anymore! From blindingly-bright mod go-go girls to demure peasant lasses posed with that most German of animals, the Llama, these images reveal another side of what went on behind the Berlin Wall.
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Customer Reviews
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Awesome little coffee table book
Rating  (4)
Date: 2007-07-07
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
Beth Fox gave a fabulous and serious review above, and I'll add to it just to say that almost all of the photos in this book were taken from one photographer, so it's really just one person's limited view of the fashion from that era.
But it's very, very entertaining nonetheless.
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Some of the Republik's most daring fashion experiments
Rating  (5)
Date: 2006-04-26
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
For a short time the bureaucrats who ran East Germany decided to bring some style into their lives, hiring professional photographers and models to represent fashion and socialist achievements. OFF THE WALL: FASHION FROM EAST GERMANY 1964 TO 1980 documents these daring images, adding a set of intriguing color photos rarely seen in the West to the chronicles of world fashion history. Some of the Republik's most daring fashion experiments come to life under the hand of photographer Gunter Rubitzsch, who hired local models and chose socialist-inspiring backgrounds to display fashion.
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Bizarre View Behind the Iron Curtain
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-12-14
6 out of 6 customers found this reveiw helpful
"East German Fashion"? Get your migraine pills and get ready to stare open-mouthed at some of the most blinding creations of the "Workers' and Peasants' State."
My interest in East German fashion was piqued by reading sociological surveys of East Germany and watching the movie "Heisser Sommer," where you can see some of that fashion at its not-quite-worst. East Germany differed a bit from other Warsaw Pact states in that the rulers attempted to provide their subjects with more consumer goods than found elsewhere. Whether this stemmed from the rulers' professed belief that socialism should improve the lives of ordinary people, or their fear that the knowledge of West German standards of living would make the populace restless, is not important. What is germane is that East Germany had more consumer products than other eastern-European countries (although this is damning with faint praise) and the rulers paid some attention to providing "fashionable" clothing.
The question, of course, is: what is "fashionable"? The clothing in this book was clearly an attempt to ape the wilder western fashions of the late 60s and early 70s. However, the clothing is much more cheaply made, and it shows: patterns do not match at the seam line, the colors are garish, and the execution of design is poor. Luckily (for the citizens of East Germany) this was considered to be cutting-edge fashion, and not day-to-day wear. This stuff is far worse than what you would see in a Sears catalog of the same era.
But this is really not a book for the tiny niche who are interested in the fashions of East Germany. If you really care, see "Fashioning Socialism: Clothing, Politics and Consumer Culture in East Germany," by Judd Stitziel. This book is a side-splitting look at the worst of the worst of 1960s and 1970s Communist fashion, with more orange than any one person can stand. I was rolling on the floor laughing my a** off. For $10, you can too.
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