Did ya know Miuccia Prada was a communist? A "soft" one and apparently it wasn't unusual for the young middleclass in the 60ies in Italy... but, a communist, after all.

 the guardian wrote about this a while ago, for example

I wonder how many communists there are in the current fashion scene.
One of the new and "undergroundish" it labels of the past years is Gosha Rubchinskiy, whose founder of the same name is Russian. In his designs, he picks up the moods of the Eastern block in the time of the Perestroika, a kind of streetwear for a youth among concrete boxes and the austerities of a life in (post-) real socialism. His models wear t-shirts with the hammer and sickle symbol printed on them, the same symbol is shaved in their millimeter short hair. There is also a t-shirt with the Russian and Chinese flags on it.
Is it very naive to wonder if this is intended to be more than a pose, more than nostalgia and longing for youthfulness? Is it just a sell-out? The aesthetics of 90ies poor Russia can only seem appealing at this juncture, as we live in a much more crowded world of excessive supply. The clear symbols, the simple cuts and colours and the rough appearence of the models and the setting stand out from the usual and are kind of "not fashionable", even if we consider other "outsider" brands. honestly, there's nothing new regardings cuts and shapes or materials, it's just the strength of the symbols. so who is designing them and which people are they designed for?
For sure one shouldn't equalize the artist/designer and the piece of art/design, and this is a rule which applies to fashion as to any other kind of art. Gosha Rubchinskyi might not be a communist, but he definitely put something out there which is discussable, he put out symbols with a clear meaning. I don't think the term of the sell-out applies here. [to be continued]