Casual Wear and Casual Behaviour: the Different Fates of Non-conformism in Russia and 'the West'

2008/01/01 by Katharina Klingseis, Klingseis, Katharina · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · #Fashion and Cultural Textiles

paper · pdf · doi:10.57938/12e92414-2ecf-4f02-bbd3-424e5a743cb2

openalex publication_date 2008/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23

Abstract

In this paper I will critically reflect upon an intercultural experience connected with appearance, dress, and the different mutual perceptions of ‘others’ in public space in current Moscow and Vienna. I will construe this experience as fundamentally different attitudes towards informal behaviour, appearance and gender ambivalence. One of the main causes of this situation I have located in the 1960s, a period of anti-authoritarian subcultural upheaval in the Soviet Union as well as ‘the West’. The very different social, economic and political contexts of their emergence and their further (‘socialist’ vs. capitalist) trajectories are, as I will argue, at the root of the perceptions and connotations of casual wear and behaviour in the public spaces of present-day Moscow and Vienna.

Cited by

• Intercultural Communication between Germans and Poles at the European University Viadrina
• Intercultural Aspects of New Russian Politeness

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