my mom - my style icon. Even in USSR :)

I have just discovered a very fascinating blog about the style of our mothers here. In this blog are featured pictures of parents, that people send to the boggers behind this blog. I found this idea amazing and now they also published a whole book about it. I think it could be very interesting to see photos from Soviet-era (our mothers were born, raised, got married and gave birth to us in USSR), the times where good nice clothes were a scarce ressource and nearly all women took sewing classes and constantly were on the search for nice fabrics (apparently it was easier to find fabrics than ready-to-wear stuff) As a result, my grandmother left after herelf piles of rolled fabrics, that were never touched (those days you had to grab the stuff while it was on the shelves, not when you needed it) hundreds of meters, probably.. I think we threw them away  - bad decision, as I look at it now! BUT I kept the most precious thing - a now 60 years old leather clutch, hand made in Estonia and with personal engravement, it is my treasure.

Yeah, poor women - they could only dream of such beauty in a country where all ressources were devoted to the defence...

There are so many girls out there, who adore the style and clothes of those times and who dress up in vintage and dream about going back to that era. Well, I do not think Russian woman would ever dream of going back in time.. My mum keeps telling me how lucky I am to be born now. She had only 1 pair of nice shoes and when they broke, she had litterally nothing to wear and nowhere to go to buy them (soviet stores stocked on made-in-USSR crap). But still, they tried their best - bought smuggled clothes (that diplomats and ship-crews took to USSR from their trips abroad). This stuff costed a fortune, literary speaking - 3 months' salary of an engineer. My mum bought a pair of velvet pants from those smugglers, after saving for a while. (btw, this smuggling was completely illegal and could result in criminal sanctions)

So women still tried their best anyway - nothing gonna stop a woman from looking good, not even a Communist party! Cheers for them!

The Communist party did not approve such short skirts. But like they cared ;)