Urban Media Archive
Укр
Center for Urban History
6 Bohomoltsia Str. Lviv 79005, Ukraine

Family Album

Collection consists of photographs showing street fashion and vestimentary practices. It is a part of the Family Album project, the goal of which is to create a digital collection of street fashion of Ukraine in the XX century which opens new possibilities for researchers. Collection is supplemented by crowdsourcing method from private archives of residents of Ukraine. 

History of fashion studies, as the term ‘fashion’ itself, are ‘western’ modern phenomena, though today both can be applied when researching fashion far wider geographically. Concept of fashion differs from country to country. It can be influenced by numerous things like political circumstances, economic models and it’s specifics, unique features of culture. Ukraine, a country which lived through multiple transformations during the XX century, is a particularly interesting example.

The Soviet period was the longest. It’s planned economic system defined the range of clothes in stores. It’s economic crises and shortages defined 
emergence of alternative practices of creating hand-made clothes, small manufacturing of it and  ways of purchasing and remodelling garments. Dissolution of Soviet Union and change into a free market economic system changed the very understanding of fashion in Ukraine. It was influenced both by imports of clothes and by availability of foregn cinema, journals, visual materials etc.

Descriptions of collection units are based on the commentaries of surveyed persons  who contributed photographs. Many of them recollect who created the clothes they are wearing in pictures and how they were made. Significant part of the collection shows the pictures of people in clothes which were difficult to get,  or in clothes which they tried to adapt to what they have seen on the members of foreign popular music bands, or in clothes remodelled to fit their sizes, in clothes with homemade accessories. Pictures trace the evolution of fashion from gender and age-related points of interest: pictures are showing men and women of different ages and social statuses. Collection also demonstrates changes in most basic and popular clothes like coats, dresses, hats and footwear.

Consisting of pictures including the span of the entire XX century, the collection represents very different types of photographs - from paper monochrom pictures framed in branded photo studio mats at the change of the century to diapositives, photographic film and color photos. 

Created with the support of Ukrainian Cultural Foundation
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Family Album
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