Political Protest and Snobbery Fashion among Cracow Students in the Early 1950s

The et h n olog-ica l r·cscarch on the everyd ay l i fe of' b ig Pol i sh c ities has on ly com menced . The author descri be:; a ,;cr ies of' cuHto m a ry behav iours con nected with the dress of the students of Cracow in the years 1945-1956. Basing on the newspapers of those times and on h is own memories , the author discusses the fashion of that period , the ways of obta i ning the c l oth ing and its alteration necessary si nce a considerable part of it came from the m i l itary stores of the Western armies. A proper haircut and a special way of bearing were chosen to m a tch the dress. Jt was a demonstration i n opposi tion to the uniform propagated by the Communist youth organisation , a manifestation of the philosophy of life. According to the author that fashion was a conscious form ofthe protest expressed by the academic youth against the cultural unification introduced by the totalitar­ ian system limned in Poland in the period fol low i ng World War II.

Professor dr Leszek Dzieyel, Direct01; Instytut etnologii, Uniwersytetu Jagiellolisk iego, ul. Grodzha 52, PL-31-044 Krah6w, Poland. E-mail: dziegiel@grodzhi. ph ils. z4j. edu.pl For centuries the student community has been an essential component of Cracow's cultural environment. The life and customs of old-time students have often provided a rewarding field of exploration fo r novelists, poets, playwrights and scholars. The last-mentioned group has been exhibiting a particularly keen interest in the distant past, which has acquired a nostalgic patina of centuries gone by (Stepanova 1996:82-93), undergoing an ever increasing mythologi zation and distortion in the process. On the other hand, everyday life and popular customs in more recent times have received much less scholarly attention, even though a lot of written sources and iconographic materials are availa ble, to say nothing of the remembrances of people who began studies in Cracow less than half a century ago. Ethnological and anthropo logical reflection on the everyday life of big cities in Poland in the 20th century is still at the beginning stage. Scholars who deal with those matters have often relied so far on the popular culture model and concentrated on the analysis of various manifestations of so-called "plebeian customs". This is certainly the case in Cracow, where the favourite topics include the annual Emaus fa irs at Easter, the antics ofLajkonik (a man dressed up as a Tartar rider during a popular fe stival in summer), solemn religious processions, parades of craftsmen's guilds etc. Some attention has also been given to the city's market places, particularly in connection with the contacts between Cracow and the neigh bouring villages. Incidentally, the suburban village has sometimes offered a convenient and "safe" subject of research for an ethnologist venturing fo r the first time into the domain of "urban anthropology".
The life of students and the young genera tion of educated people in present-day Cracow is usually viewed in an artistic or hedonistic perspective (Godula (ed.) 1995:239-290). Other aspects of everyday life have usually been ab sent fr om the literature, or at least fr om publi cations about Cracow.
The late 1940s and the first half of the 1950s present a particularly interesting period for a historian of Polish culture or an ethnologist, in view of the politicul circumstu nces of those days. The programme:; offiH·ced "re-ed ucation" of society took particularly drastic forms in big cities, such a:; Crucow, Wu rsuw or Poznw1. The generation of adolescents and young adults, being a category traditi on al ly opposed to all forms of pressure and any attempts to impose by decree uniform patterns of daily life, reacted by specific forms of protest, e�:�capisn1 and rejec tion of the oflicially approved way oflifc. Under the peculiar circumstances of Stalinist Poland, this protest against i deological ly determined, fo rced uniformity did not lead to pl uralism in preferences and tastes. At least in the field of popular fa shion and entertainment it gave rise to a more or less uniform type of popular cul ture, which was simply the negation of the model officially professed by the simple-minded social engineers . 'l'he ideological war in the field of popular culture in post-war Poland that the communist system waged against society and lost constitutes an extensive area of exploration for students of customs, not only in Poland , but in entire Central and Eastern Europe. So far, however, this area has been sadly neglected (Dzi.,:giel 1995).
Issues offashion, clothes, entertainment and resistance to ideological pressure in daily life were dealt with by Leopold Tyrmand (who died in the United States a couple of years ago) in his columns, novels and essays (Tyrmand 1955(Tyrmand , 1980. We owe him at least some fa irly adequate accounts of cultural situations. His observa tions, however, were usually made fr om the point of view of well-to-do or even elitist circles of Warsaw of the 1950s and the Warsaw under world, linked with that first group by various kinds of dealings. Tyrmand's position in War saw society did not exactly place him in close contact with the student circles ofWarsaw, with all their social, financial and cultural differen tiation. He was, however, one of the few authors fa scinated by this aspect of contemporary cul ture.
'l'he intention of the present essay is simply to acknowledge the existence of a new research area, using as an example the popular student fa shion in an old, big-city academic centre. The description of cultural elements presented be low results fr om the author's own experience 68 and obse rvations made during his studies at th e Jagel l onian University in th e years 1950-1955 among a group of fe llow students of both sexe�:�. Additional reflection was made possible by th e author's field studies in ethnography carried out in those years in various rural regions of Poland.
In th e early 1950s, fa shion -as well as entertainment -played a principal role in the bizarre war the object of which was to promote an ideologically appropriate lifestyle. Today, after all those years, the oflicial attempts to bring into uniformity the fa shion of trousers or skirts may seem ridiculous -reminiscent of those rare instances of crazy regimes where ideological totalitarianism still reigns supreme. One might wonder how the dogmatic official propagandists could fa il to see the fu tility of their fierce and fr enzied attacks. Back then, however, things looked different.
For many people, the defence of their indi vidual tastes in the field of clothing became a surrogate battlefield where they fo ught for their right to privacy and to individual preferences. It was a struggle for personal liberty.
Unimportant and trivial issues of hairstyle and clothing were often blown up out of all proportion. It was a strategy of the system to provoke hysteria over matters of no consequence. When, many years later, the system itself re signed fr om some of its ideological incantations and symbols, it left behind an often idolatrous cult of the very lifestyle it had vainly tried to eradicate. The artificially maintained isolation of millions of young people fr om everyday ele ments of the Western civilization left society in a state of infantilism. One of its manifestations was the attitude of young Poles -but also Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians or Russianstowards modern fa shion. The ideological war of the early 1950s in the field of entertainment and fa shion has long since ended, but until now it remains an area where reactions of society are devoid of all criticism and objective reflec tion. This is highly typical of civilizationally retarded neophytes who have lived in a state of cultural isolation.
Jazz, chewing gum, Coca-Cola -these were the symbols ofthe alleged corruption ofthe non communist world and at the same time ele-ments of' an extremely naively construed my thology of' the West. Having banned Western novelties, the regime forfeited the chance to gain pop u l arity even among the most primitive groups of the youth, whose support it tried to win in the first place. The oflicially extolled drabness would soon lose any appeal, while things attacked by the state propaganda as manife�;tations of bourgeois, Western tastes were promoted to the rank offorbidden fru it. In some young people, however, the authorities managed to reinforce complexes and the sense of powerlessness. Those people had come to believe that stagnation, drabness and banality constituted a virtue. They let themselves be persuaded that novelty and change in everyday life signified an attempt to destroy their world. The East, on the other hand, had little to offer that could really impress the thousands of young people who yearned for civilizational advancement. What made things even worse, post-war Poland, deliberately impoverished and reduced to the status of a cultural backwater, had likewise ceased to appeal to the greater part of the youth in the long run, despite the noisy propaganda. This was also the case with clothing, which usually plays a very important role in the life of young people of both sexes, as a means of expressing one's personality, aspira tions, expectations and sense of membership of the group which one accepts.
The offe r of the state-owned shops was out of fa shion and in poor taste, both in terms of design and colours. Ladies' garments could make even the most beautiful girl look ugly. The shapeless coats and jackets, heavily padded at the shoulders, gave everyone a squat look. The shoulder padding was seen in those years as an epitomy of conservatism and bad taste. Aw k ward, mass-produced dresses were neither short, nor long, neither loose, nor tight, and had a lot of pretentious fr ills around the neckline. Women's fo otwear imitated the kitschy designs of the late 1930s. Only private boutiques, whose number dwindled rapidly, would offer a limited selection of stylish fa shions at exorbitant pric es.
Looking back today, nearly half a century later, at the official fa shion and goods sold in state-owned shops in those times, one can see that it was an impoverished and vulgari 1.ed variety of the type of clothing worn in the year�; 1939-1940(Dziek011ska-Koztowska 1964.
Modern fa shion would reach the cordoned off Poland of the 1950s slowly and selectively.
The so-called "new look", which marked the reaction of the West against the wartime re strictions and military requirements that even women had had to comply with, came to Poland only much later, half-heartedly and, occasional ly, in highly distorted forms (Dziekor\ska-Ko ztowska 1964:297-356). The witty, illustrated guide to modern dress by Barbara Hoff and Jan Kamyczek, Jak oni si� ma.i'l ubierac [The way they should dress) had yet to appear, in the wake of the fu ndamental political and ideolog ical changes of 1956 (Hoff & Kamyczek: 1956).
Meanwhile, inspiration had to be derived fr om Western films, shown in ever decreasing num bers, and sometimes fr om old copies of We stern magazines. This unnatural isolation left the young generation with a nearly pathological craving for novelties, ideas or gimmicks of all kinds originating fr om the mythical land of well-being, where life was supposed to run smoothly and colourfully to the rhythmical sound of music. And in the Stalinist era no one would make the young generation any promises of a "speedy accession to Europe"! On the con trary, society was told daily that very soon the revolutionary anger ofthe masses was going to erupt, plunging the rest of the world in the drab reality. On hearing this, many a young man would think that if the worst came to the worst, it would nevertheless be nicer to be on the other side of the Iron Curtain when that mythical revolutionary eruption took place ... Or, mean while, to get to a place where one could at least enjoy the material goods denied to the people at home.
As in the case of women's fa shion, also men's wear showed the same boring styles in every shop selling factory-made clothes. Likewise, an air of dead seriousness emanated fr om the official photographs ofthe highest-ranking dig nitaries. I remember a visit of a group of Soviet experts on power industry, after which the bag gy, awkward-looking double-breasted jackets they wore received the epithet "high-powered" in student parlance. Decades would have to pasR before party activist.R Rta rted to re ad lash ion magazines, usc the services or beauticians and mw,;;;ew,;c;;, or play Lenni;; in order to get slim. In the 1950s, men's fas hion promoted by the ofiicial elite reflected the tastes fr om the first years of World War II. This becomes quite apparent when one confronts it with old Amer ican films or with archive photograph;; taken at conferences and meetings of statesmen fr om the East and the We st.
Navy blue or dark brown double-breasted pinstripe suits were popular with people of unrefined taste, be they rich or poor. Men wore oversized jackets stiff with padding at the shoul ders, with very narrow lapels. Trousers creased at the waistband with numerous seamings. A fa ctory-made shirt could be recognized at a mile's distance by its pale hue and pointed collar. The conformist's neck was adorned by a nar row tie, the shape and design of which brought to mind its pre-war antecedent. Anyway, it differed radically from the broad, florid fa sh ions popular in the West, whose appearance in Poland was in a way the first sign of protest against the officially accepted style in clothing.
In warmer seasons, people usually wore greenish canvas coats with side pockets and a belt, called "Canadians", although they had nothing to do with Canada. In winter these were replaced by homespun coats of a similar design, usually herringbone patterned. Some people, though not many, still preferred the "partisan" style, with breeches and long boots (so-called "officer boots"). Hats were rare among students. In contrast, clerks and, generally, persons of rank enjoyed wearing their "felts".
The young generation, on the other hand, often wore homespun caps. City hoodlums would often stuff newspaper underneath for elegance; this type of headgear earned the nickname "thug caps", first used by Warsaw newspapers and then adopted in Cracow. In winter, pre-war style ski-caps were still in use.
In the area of fo otwear, black leather domi nated. Brown shoes appeared in shops on a more substantial scale only after the so-called "October transformations". Impecunious stu dents usually wore black shoes or ankle-high 70 laced boots with flat toecaps and leather or rubber Ho le;;, u gly a nd stylele;;s . On hot. days, some put on broad-strapped sandals, while oth er;; wore tennis ;;hues, usually of a " dark w bite" colour. They were restored to their original appearance with the use of chalk, hence chalk marks were not an i n frequ ent sight on the pavements.
The fi rs t livelier addition to the otherwise drab and shapeless attire of a student fr om the country who had just enrolled at the university could have been a peaked velvet cap the colour of which symbolized the particular faculty of the university, or an angular, cream-coloured rnga ty wka cap (the traditional design worn by the Polish army). Officials fr om the party and the ZMP youth organization viewed those kinds of headgear with suspicion, as alleged "relics of the bourgeois and corporatist past" ("corpora tions" were pre-war student societies). But the favourite among young men on the threshold of adulthood was a black, fe lt beret. Being of poor quality, it quickly lost shape in the rain and bulged like a mushroom cap. It was said that young men in black berets sometimes fe ll vic tim to the aggression of street gangs, hostile to students. I cannot say how true these rumours were.
A student fr eshly admitted to the university would usually shun carrying his notes and textbooks in a briefcase: that would have been too much like at school or in an office. Instead, he would go to a "sports shop" (which was not exactly what we would expect it to be today ... ) and buy a shoulder bag of yellow leather. Stu dents who did some fieldwork particularly fa voured those quasi-military-style bags, in addi tion to which they often put on in winter a brown "aviator's cap" made of artificial leather.
The same kind of headgear was also used by official fu nctionaries dispatched to the country side to perform their duties, and, of course, by motorcyclists. Crash helmets were not yet man datory in those days. For us, the clerks fr om the revenue board or the PZU insurance company wrapped up in their trench coats, speeding by on their company-owned motorcycles on the way to the countryside, briefcases dangling fr om their shoulders on a narrow strap -or returning home in a state of utter exhaustion -made de lightfu l fi gures of fu n.
Students ofthe Academy ofihe FineAris and of the fa culty of architecture at ihe Te chnical University proudly carried around ihcir huge sketch pads or cardboard tubes for tracing pa per. It was a matter ofnobiliiation and chick for them. Malicious tongues would say, however, that the very fa ct of showing off one's sketch pad did not necessarily amount io much: after all even pre-war maidservants had been known to dress up as secondary school siudenis! In winter, the sports fa shion thai the poor young man fr om the country could atlord was a pair of pipe-legged skiing trousers let into old fa shioned skiing boots with straps covering the laces. In this outfit he would trudge boldly through the puddles in Cracow's Main Market Place, even though he had never in his lifetime gone skiing. He neither knew how to, nor could afford it. A true skiing snob fr om the slopes of Kasprowy Wierch would no longer dare to show up in the Tatra Mountains dressed like that. Also weekend tourists and mountaineers ob served their own dress codes in order to express their aspirations and emphasize their partici pation in particular youth groups. This issue deserves a more extensive treatment (Dzi�giel 1994).
Whenever the everyday style of dress worn by young people in the early 1950s went beyond the most primitive and banal patterns proposed by the clothes stores, it began to reflect the yearnings, aspirations, petty triumphs, and frus trations of the generation. Simultaneously, it opened up -inevitably -the way for various, often ridiculous fo rms of affectation and snob bery.
The war had ended only five years before. The shabby victors from the East made them selves seen everywhere, and yet the myth ofthe other victorious army was still alive: the army whose arrival fr om the West and fr om across the ocean had been awaited for so many years. An efficient, elegant and at the same time fr iendly army, which for reasons best known to itself had stopped somewhere halfway across occupied Germany and remained immobile, leaving us to become prey to primitive barbar ians. In that period of fr ustrated expectations and lingering hopes, the demand for clothing fr om American military stores acquired fi rst of' all a symbolic di mension. Aesthetic considera tions played a secondary role here and practica I uiiliiy was ihe least important (Kantor 1982 the university, did not think much of the style of the uniforms of their commanding officers, to say nothing of the fa ded dungarees they had to wear in the field, which were an object of con stant ridicule. Thus in big-city market-places, the Polish People's Army outfit occupied only a marginal position, unlike Western military garments.
Clothes of the latter type were much sought after for many years after the war, despite their high prices and signs of wear and tear. Jackets with frayed collars, patched battle-dress blous es or windbreakers with greasy fo lds had their dedicated fans who painstakingly washed, cleaned and repaired them. In those years, filth, tatters, rags and studied sloppiness were not yet in fa shion. What did matter was the design and the unequalled touch of the types of fa brics invented by the leading British and American military labs. Buyers paid attention to colour, but the main thing was the comforta ble and clever design of every article of military clothing produced overseas.
The greater part of those garments came from Britain, brought to Poland by fo rmer Polish soldiers returning home fr om the West. For many years they cou ld be Rcen wearing old, sand-coloured battle-dress and bluck bcrciR. Sometimes they might sell you a worn-out, tight-fi tting military overcoat made of cloth or a neat, brown trench-coat of the type callednobody knew why -"Major Belt coat". Despite the wear and the passing of yea rs , they were particularly elegant.
Even bciier-!iiting, however, wereArnerican military clothes. Comparing the outfit of the two armies, one would notice th e British inabil ity to combine ch ic with com Iori and fu nctional ity in the design of special-purpose garments. British military boots, for instance, were ex tremely comfortable and oflered ideal protec tion against water. But their colour and shape left much to be desired and sometimes provoked scorn. It was not so with the American outfit.
Likewise, the short British battle-dress blouses that could be cleverly fa stened to the trousers did not prove fu nctional for civilian use. The American olive-coloured, hip-length uniform blouses, on the other hand, were more comfort able. Among the many different jackets fr om the U.S., the veritable legend of those times was the lightweight canvas type with a woollen lining, of the kind worn by General Patton. It was also in those times that the first fo ur pocketed blouses with a waistband made their appearance. Mt er the Korean War they were adopted by most armies of the world, except in the Communist block. In winter, the brown airmen's sheepskin coats, narrow at the hips and fitted with big collars, sold for outrageous prices.
Another big hit with young dandies was military trousers: tight-fitting, made of sand coloured cotton. An appropriate complement to these was a dark olive-coloured pullover. Some, though not many, would don in addition a close fitting canvas cap with a large, square peak. It was either turned upwards, in the style fa voured by the heroes of wartime films about crews of the B-17 Flying Fortresses, or tilted dowli so as to screen the fo rehead and eyes.
Dark, rectangular sunglasses a la General MacArthur were also a much coveted object that most people could only dream of.
In wintertime, military fa shion enthusiasts hunted not only for the aforementioned airforce Rheepski n coats, but alRo lor the popular navy type duffel coats. In ihi:; way the outfit worn by the seamen ofthe allied fo rces sailing across the icy water:; of the North Sea or Atlantic had become a status :;ymbol fo r those Pole:; who could aflord it. Many years later, the hooded coat became so popular thai even state-owned manufacturers started to turn out garments of a similar fa shion, although of a much poorer quality. The design thus became commonplace and finally went out of fa shion.
The attraction of the military outfit was its lOO-per-cent authenticity. That was the real thing, not an imitation suited to the liking ofthe youngsters of the ki nd you can sec in "army shops" today. Back then, no one would have thought of wearing colourful badges of imagi nary units or an admiral's epaulets.
The type of clothing I am writing about was available, although in a very narrow selection, fr om second-hand commission-sale shops, so called komisy, which charged ridiculous prices.
Th ose who ventured to market places in small towns had a chance to get Western clothes at a fr action ofthat cost. This was particularly true about regions fr om which the most peasants had once emigrated to America as, for instance, the Carpathians, but also the Kurpie region in northern Poland. Descendants of the one-time village paupers whom hunger had driven to America now showered their Polish relatives with hand-me-downs. Overseas fa shion did not suit the local, provincial tastes. Thus clothes one could see in a fa shion magazine were often used around the house or farm for the dirtiest chores. We often observed, much to our horror, good-natured fa rmers digging potatoes or spreading manure dressed in rags that had once been the most elegant suits or jackets. More and more often, however, pedlars would call at peasants' cottages: the Western clothes they would buy there dirt cheap could be resold in town at a huge profit. Some of those salesmen were regular visitors at student hostels, always carrying a bag of attractive merchandise. They were eagerly awaited by their regular custom ers. Others, however, went straight to the mar ket place.
For several decades, Cracow's flea market, called tandeta in the local idiom, was constantly being relocated fr om one place in the outRkirts of the town to another. A muddy path led fr om the shabby and ugly street to an enclosure surrounded partly by a wall and partly by a fe nce. At the entrance swarmed groups of individuals of both sexes, dressed in drab clothes, who were trying to dupe the newcomers into a deal. They would offe r to buy goods brought by others -at ridic ulously low prices -only to try to sell the same thing at a profit a couple of metres away. Ta n deta regulars treated those petty tricksters with a haughty indifference. They steered care fu lly, clothes-filled bags in hand, among the rows of sellers proffering their wares. Usually, they did not feel like mixing with that market place proletariat, although they did look around to sec what was being sold and for how much.
Finally, they would make their way to the cen tral part of the ta.n.deta, where displayed on tarpaulin sheets lying on the ground (plastic was not used for such purposes in those times: it was too scarce and precious) were heaps of clothes of foreign origin, guarded by the trades men. Depending on the season, those people would stamp about to keep off either the cold, or the boredom. Their fa ces had become rough ened after the hundreds of days spent in the heat or fro st. Cigarettes in their mouths, they would smile ingratiatingly at you, displaying yellow teeth. In winter, they would put on -over all the other warm clothes -an additional green or once-white raincoat, so greasy with dirt that every fold of it shone. Women wrapped ker chiefs or shawls -draped turban -like as had been fa shionable in the wartime years -around their heads. Experienced buyers would noncha lantly examine the piles of clothes lying on the sheets and ask about the prices with an osten tatious disgust. People who regularly fr equent ed the market place in order to convert goods received fr om the West into cash were often well known among the tandeta elites. Every so often someone would accost them to inquire about the contents ofthe bags they carried. It was typical for such a seller to have a close circle of regular buyers. Some customers, however, were best avoided as potential informers.
To the left, next to the wall, there operated sellers of the worst kind of rags and totally worn-out shoes. Those items, offered for sale fo r a song, had often been extracted fr om the spa cious wardrobes of old Cracow flats, fo r the purpose of being thrown away. All kinds of goods fo und buyers in that section of the tande ta, but then the amounts of money that changed hands in the process were negligible. Shoes and boots that were worn-out beyond repair were often bought by some country shoemaker who would use them as material for mending other shoes, or, alternatively, would patch them up somehow and sell them to a village beggar. Such was the condition of the merchandise that some prospective clients were inclined to poke about it with a stick. On the other hand, the interest aro used by this section of tho ta ndeta speaks volumes about tho economic situation of tho Poland in those years. No owner of a "lumpox" shop in Cracow, Rolling uRed clotheR by th e kilogram, would dare to include this kind of stuff in his offer.
The Cracow ta ndeta, like all public gather ings , must have been routinely observed by the secret police. However, th o number of pickpock ets operating there no doubt exceeded the number of informers .
Most students visited the tandeta fo r social rather then mercantile reasons. Their misera ble scholarships would hardly allow them to buy things there, even though many an item of clothing aroused an unbearable desire. And yet the style-conscious youngsters were regular visitors in Kalwaryjska street, if only to keep abreast ofthe latest fa shions. For many years it was a fitting thing to do to boast about some supposedly excellent bargain one had made at the tandeta. Nobody, even the swankiest person of either sex, fe lt embarrassed about wearing second-hand and often well-worn clothes, which nevertheless conjured the magic of overseas fa shion. It was not just a matter of design.
People were fa scinated also by the touch of the fa brics, their softness, smoothness and strength. Those clothes fe lt astonishingly light to wear.
The earliest synthetics rustled seductively and no matter how hard you crumpled them, they would return to shape in a second all by them selves, as if by magic. Many years had to pass before the impecunious neophytes of plastic modernity rediscovered the true merits of the despised natural fibres. Ko mis shops with sec ond-hand goods prospered, bazaars expanded. All the while the sorry products of the domestic industry were held in utter contempt. Girls were particularly disgusted with those of their fr iends who apprehensively altered clothes sent to them fr om abroad to make them match the traditional, "quiet" designs.
Apart fr om military outfit, whose flow into Poland had by now shrunk to a trickle, more and more civilian clothes began to reach the market and became the decisive influence on the avant-garde of the early 1950s. lt is not true that the most widely fo llowed style in those days was that of dtolersi, that is, "j olly boys", 74 whom th o official propaganda Rnon dubbed biili nia.rze, or "hikinnihs". A "bikinnik" wore ruther shortish trousers, :;o tight-fitting th at they al mo:;t required u :;hoohorn to put on, :;tr·iped socks and extremely thick-soled shoes. Other attributes included a broad, florid tie, a jacket with padded shoulders but narrow in th e waist, and a very broad-brimmed hat with a small crown, called a "pancake hat". A "bikinnik's " hair would be carefully swept back so as to form a so-called "pleureuse" covering his neck. Bulin the days I am writing about that kind o!Tashion was popular mostly with Cracow's underworld -the "street-corner society" in which students had no intention to be included. In Western Europe, that rather decadent style had had its followers -thuggish dandies called zazoualready during the war and it must have been there and then that Leopold Tyrmand picked up his extravagant style, which shocked his Polish fri ends so much in the late 1940s (Szarota 1995:81-86, Fig. 28 and 29).
How, then, should a young citi zen of Cracow have chosen his clothes and hairstyle in 1951, that is, assuming that apart fr om the desire to look good, he had access to gift parcels fr om abroad or, alternatively, enough cash to visit the tandeta and the komis shops for other pur poses than purely cognitive?
First of all, he should have chosen a well fitted, soft, single-breastedjacket with relative ly short but wide lapels, unpadded on the shoul ders. Such jackets had, apart fr om the regular flap pockets, also an additional small pocket at the waist, on the left-hand side -a fr eak of fa shion fr om a far-off land. Trousers, in their turn, which never had any tucks, had to fit tightly at the hips and then the legs narrowed down, to reach a width of some 20-23 em at the bottom. They either had a 3-to-4-cm cuff or no cuff at all -that was a hallmark of elegant design. Yet another was the presence of two pockets at the back. Short, pipe-legged, "j olly boy-style" trousers were left to hooligans to wear -and to official cartoonists to portray in their attempts, as fierce as they were fu tile, to eradicate the "bikinnik" subculture. Shirt col lars had to be small and narrow. Ties had broad fr onts and a newly devised, heart-shaped knot had come into fa shion. Vulgar images -of the kind of a nude Hawaiian girl under a palm tree -were no longer the vogue.
Light suede shoes on thick rubber soles be gan to give way to brown and yellow mocca::;in::;, which you could easily jump into and out of. Shoes on corrugated soles ofthick, hard rubber (popularly called "tractor shoe::;"), so popular in the subsequent years, had not made their ap pearance yet.
In view of Cracow'::; poor climate, an elegant inhabitant of that town would often wear a soft, black beret which admirably withstood rain, unlike its predecessor made of fe lt. Boys and girls were desperately trying to lind one, but private manufacturers somehow could not keep up with the demand, while the giant state owned producers stuck to the old fashions and ways. When the inexorable Central European fr ost set in, those who did not shun some eccen tricity put on small, woollen caps fr om military stocks or shapeless commando-style headgear fa shioned fr om double-layered, army-issue scarves. The most stylish thing to do, however, was to go about bareheaded for as long as it was possible.
Girls doing artistic or quasi-artistic studies particularly if they were well-off -were more ambitious, as far as clothing was concerned, than ones fr om other milieux and schools. They preferred sports clothes of Western origin. On their heads, they usually wore red headscarves, imprinted with a pattern and bearing a "FAST COLORED" notice; these could also be used as neckerchiefs. Their clothes were colourfu l, un pretentious -and expensive. On cold days, it was fa shionable to wear bright yellow three quarter coats of camel wool or ladies' duffel coats. In 1950, if not earlier, the long-lasting craze began for bright-coloured, striped syn thetic sweaters and enormous, colourful nylon kerchiefs which could be worn on the head or tied around the neck. Yet another item which gained great popularity was the zip fa stener. It was used everywhere, whether it was necessary or not. Some circles of the Cracow intelligentsia had a penchant for broad, chequered skirts, tight, black, synthetic sweaters and hunter's shoulder bags of yellow leather. This kind of fa shion was sometimes perceived as a nostalgic form of protest against the evil times and it endured for many years . Embroidered sheep skin coats of a pre-war design , taken in at the waist, combined with fur caps, were character istic ofthe circles of "former landowners", gen uine ones and others.
One could not afford to buy fa shionable clothes only in expensive komis shops or at the nearly equally expensive tandeta. People tri ed to sew their garments themselves or commis sioned tailors to do the job. This was made easier by the fact that the early 1950s saw th e comeback of a once popular and commonplace type of fabric: corduroy. Initially, people used the standard variety, available in the state owned stores. Soon, however, the arbiters of fashion declared it banal and ugly. The vogue now was delicate, fine-textured corduroy. It was used first of all fo r trousers. To be sure, it quickly bulged at the knees and trouser legs were becoming short and baggy. At the fo lds on the back it crumbled hopelessly, leaving large bald patches. But it was fa shionable. As I said before, trousers had to be well fitted at the hips and back. Today, with all kinds of baggies being in, one finds it hard to believe. In the 1950s, however, people exchanged, with a glint in the eye, addresses of tailors who would undertake to sew trousers of such a design, or, better still, alter an old pair. I twas not easy. The Cracow craftsmen of the early 1950s simply could not adjust to the new demands. Usually they refused to do things the way their young clients wished. "What outdated fa shions they've got there in America," marvelled a tailor exam ining a pair of trousers whose design he was supposed to duplicate, borrowed fr om a fr iend who had received them in a parcel. Indeed, the new style was reminiscent of the days of Count von Zeppelin's first experiments with airships and the Meyerling tragedy (Banach 1965).
Therefore, commissions to alter a pair of trou sers or sew a new one usually ended in a miserable fa ilure even of the masters of the art: The tailor had botched the job again! But we were soon to find out that in a narrow passage off the Main Market Place in Cracow there was an "emergency repair shop" run by a truly competent man. He gladly undertook to make all kinds of alterations and even difficult re pairs and quickly became our sartorial patron saint oflast resort. He never rejected any order, even though its execution was not always per fe eL At any rate, among the fa shion-conscious students of Cracow, he enjoyed for a wh ile the position of a monopolist.
Gradually, the blue jeans came to be per ceived as the best-loved type of trousers of the latter half of the century. In the early 1950s, however, they were only beginning to make their appearance in Poland -creating an un paralleled sensation, both because of the tex tu re of deni m, unknown in Poland before, and of their indigo colour (Davis 1992). Their price soon soared to unprecedented levels. Original ly, the design and finish of "cowboy trousers" were very traditional. They were lockstitched with a white thread and hardly ever adorned with studs. The first lucky owners proudly rolled up the cuffless legs an inch or two. People were in for another shock when denim jackets arrived. At the bazaar stalls, they were even harder to get and still more expensive.
On warm days, it was fa shionable to wear striped synthetic T-shirts, let out loosely over the trousers. This was also the way to wear flannelette sports shirts, which, in accordance with the overseas fa shion, should never be tucked in. But what were we to do here, in Central Europe, where shirt buttoning did not usually extend below the waist? Their length was not suited to that fa shion, either, as they often ended a little above the knees.
Those who despised the banal pre-war hair styles while leaving the "pleureuse" to be worn by the shady figures prowling the streets of the Zwierzyniec borough, chose a new type of hair cut which was like a crew cut, but longer at the top and sides of the head and shorter at the back. Nowadays you can get this kind ofhaircut at any barber's shop in Cracow, but in 1950 or 1951 an average hairdresser neither knew nor cared about this style. Fortunately, on the cor ner ofWarszawska and Szlak streets there was a barber who would cut our hair exactly the way we liked. All we had to do was to tell the man at the very outset we wanted our hair cut "weirdo style". He was not an old man yet, but he knew all the tricks of the trade so the customers were always satisfied.
Some fe male students in those years had 76 th eir hair cut short with a halo of curl�> ro und th o taco, a Ia Claudette Colbert. A few gi rls began to wear their hair tied in a pony tail. Other�> pro1crrod a permanent wave Jlowing over the shoulders in tho style of Ri ta Hay worth. In contrast, all kinds of pigtails, buns or plaits running across tho shoulder were seen as terribly outdated. On the other hand, hairstyles "a Ia Fanfan" or "a la Simone" inspired by the new Italian and French cinema were only to appear later.
It is interesting to note that th e authorities, so fu riously attacking all Western influences in fa shion, seemed totally ignorant of the prcler ences of students and the dress subculture based on komis and tandeta buys. They invari ably assailed the "j olly boy" in a "pancake hat" (Dzi�giel 1993:76-77). The official guards of ideological morality must have thought that clothes received in parcels or purchased at the tandeta were worn by poor people who could not affo rd to buy "decent" dress in normal shops.
And a pauper was, in those days, automatically viewed as a worthy, or at least harmless, citi zen. Besides, bosses of the ZMP youth organiza tion would sometimes appropriate clothes sent fr om the West as a gift for the poorest. And as far as hairstyles were concerned, the official prop aganda still fo ught the battle against the "pleu reuse" of the "bikinnik", never mind the crew cut. But as a matter of fa ct, to arouse the least political suspicions, one ought to have been bald. For decades after World War II, beards or moustache were out of favour with the young generation in Poland. A venerable, old professor might be wearing a moustache, but not a stu dent. Our unforgettable professor of ethnology, fo r instance, had a grey English moustache ala Clark Gable. Yo ung people were always clean shaven. Today the barber's shop at the corner of Warszawska and Szlak streets has given way to a paint shop. The tandeta square in Podg6rze has long since been built up. Its youthful clien tele of the 1950s is approaching retirement.
A separate treatment should be given to the developments in everyday student fa shion in the days immediately before the political break through of October 1956. Advocates of tradi-tiona]and ZMl'-style dress were clearly losing their ,.;cal. 'l'he domm;tic cloth ing market, weak and inadequate as it was, fi nally started to imitate We:-� te rn design::;, albeit awkwardly and faint-heartedly. 'l'he scanty import of more at tractive footwear or clothes from the adjacent countries bred a naive conviction about civiliza tional advancement of our cl ose neighbours, e.g. Czechoslovakia and H.ungarythose mys terious and inaccessible lands which it was only now becom ing possibl e (for the select fe w) to visit. Noth ing, however, could erode the posi tion of the Cracow landeta. For many, many years it was a source of goods that boosted the morale and self-esteem of the fr ustrated young generation of People's Poland, whom the au thorities were trying, with less and less success, to imbue with the only correct ideology.