Soviet fashion model Leka Mironova

Soviet fashion model Leka Mironova (full name – Leocadia Mironova) – one of the most famous models of 1960-70s USSR. Like most of models of the time, to the Fashion House on Kuznetsky Most, she came by chance to support a girlfriend, a novice fashion designer Vyacheslav Zaitsev saw her. He immediately offered her to work with him. Leka has just graduated from high school. She studied ballet, but had to leave dancing because of illness of feet. She wanted to enter the faculty of architecture, but also failed because of vision problems. And she agreed to try herself as a fashion model. Leka became known abroad and was called “Russian Audrey Hepburn” for the resemblance to the great actress. After shooting in the American film “The Soviet Union Stars” (one of them, by the way, was Maya Plisetskaya), Leka was invited to a parade of top fashion models in the world.
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Soviet fashion model Valentina Yashina (1930s – 2006)

Soviet fashion model Valentina Yashina was one of the most beautiful models of the USSR in 1950-70s and her success was phenomenal. Blond goddess, Soviet Greta Garbo, fashion icon – so Yashina was described in the foreign press. In the capital’s Fashion House at Kuznetsky Most she worked for almost half a century, and appeared on the podium, even at the age of 65! Surprisingly, compatriots often called her beauty obscene and apparently out of jealousy even tried to blame her in the opposition to society. Many believed that life of Yashina was like a fairy tale. But at the end of this tale, alas, it turned out to be tragic … In her declining years, to survive, she had to work as a cleaner. Yashina got a legacy of more than five million dollars, but in her 70 years of age, she could barely make ends meet in a tiny room in a communal apartment. Ten years ago, the model was found dead in her country house in Kupavna of the Moscow region.
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Soviet propaganda textile art. M. Khvostenko. Walking pioneers. End of 1920 – 1930s

Soviet propaganda textile art – Art born of revolution. Great October Socialist Revolution has stimulated the development of all types of art and had a strong impact on the textile decoration. Total inspiration of artists with future perspective expressed in an effort to convey ideas and time lines to each worker. Hundreds of thousands of meters of fabrics were decorated with images of massive five-pointed stars, airplanes, locomotives, power masts, electric bulbs. Subjects not met before in the textile illustration and keen compositional solution dramatically isolated new pattern among traditional decorative products. It was noticeable, attracted attention, gave food for thought and even disputes. It was, as they say, socially active. Drawings of this trend came to be called propaganda textiles, or “agit-textile”. Today it has taken rightful place in the history of Soviet art.
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Soviet fashion model Mila Romanovskaya in London at the Soviet exhibition next to the mock of the spacecraft Voskhod. August 1968

In 1967 Soviet fashion model Mila Romanovskaya won the title of “Miss Russia” at the international fashion show. Famous soviet actor Andrei Mironov was in love with her, and outstanding Russian Soviet director Nikita Mikhalkov fought for her. She was the wife of the artist Yuri Cooper and friend of Joseph Brodsky. And she is a woman of her time, who independently built her own life. Exactly at the moment when she decided that freedom and solitude – the main advantages of this life, she met her greatest love. She was married three times, her third husband – businessman Douglas Edwards. Mr. and Mrs. Edwards live in the county of Hereford in a beautiful English house of the XVIII century with a small park.
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Fashion model of 1960s, Soviet Twiggy Galya Milovskaya

Soviet Twiggy Galya Milovskaya
The foreign press and people related to fashion called her “Soviet Twiggy”. She really looked like Twiggy in appearance, boyish figure and excessive thinness. Although Soviet Twiggy Galya Milovskaya dreamed of the theater, her life turned to be different. While still a student of the Shchukin Theater School, the beautiful girl began working as a fashion model at the Moscow Fashion House. A classmate invited her to try her hand in “demonstrating clothes”, as it was called, and Galina, without thinking twice, agreed. In the USSR she was considered rather skinny, because her weight barely reached the level of 42 kg with height 170 cm. In the Soviet Union it was considered that the model should be closer to the people, therefore, not too thin.
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Fashion in the Soviet Union. Svetlana Morgunova, TV presenter

Do not believe those who mistakenly say that there wasn’t fashion in the Soviet Union, and if even it was, then all was copied from the West. Soviet fashion of the Soviet era has always existed since the time of the New Economic Policy of the 1920s. So called Gatsby style with its short hairstyles, cute hats and dresses with low waist blossomed in the 1920-30s. Fashion rapidly developed after the Second World War. Women who a decade earlier had to forget about their feminine essence, put on rough clothes and stand up to the machine, or even go to the front, again wanted to be beautiful. Soviet woman were interested in fashion, always dressed fashionably, sewing herself using fashion magazine or ordered desirable model in the fashion atelier, there were a lot of them in every city of the USSR. Soviet fashion magazines, the choice of which was always offered to the clients of fashion atelier. Fashion magazines were available through the subscriptions, by mail. There was such a postal service – an annual subscription to fashion magazines. The first Fashion House was opened in Moscow, and it got the status of all-Union. In 1953 it first took part in a Prague International Competition of clothes. Almost every major industrial city had its own fashion house. Fashion magazines were published by Leningrad, Moscow, Minsk, Kiev fashion houses. Every fashion house had its own shop selling new models.
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Gorgeous Soviet fashion model Regina Zbarskaya (1935, Leningrad – 1987, Moscow)

In Soviet times, the profession of a “model” was as mysterious and unattainable, like a profession of astronaut or attache in France. Soviet people remember well the fashion magazine “Silhouette”, and some issues of the fashion magazines featuring Soviet fashion model Regina Zbarskaya. The models were inhabitants of heaven, even greater than film actresses, these at least were shown on television and interviewed for newspapers. Where the models like Regina live and how they work – remained a mystery. All these secrets revealed in the post-Soviet era. And then we have learned about sad fate of Regina Zbarskaya, betrayed by everybody – from friends and relatives to fans …
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