Shapes and styles of clothes we wear are constantly recycled and revamped in quirky, impulsive ways; however, little on the catwalks is completely new. Retro tends to rule in one way or another—instead, fabric innovation and technology are where progress lies. Not so in Russia after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Alexander Rodchenko and his constructivist associates were on a mission to bulldoze the bourgeois past of Tsarist Russia and start from a completely new place, shaping a future different in every area of life—including fashion. Utility was his purpose, embodied in his art, sculpture, photography, and graphic design. Likewise, the clothes Rodchenko designed to express the new Russia’s utopian ideals were simple, geometric in form, and ultrafunctional. Made of heavy denim, trimmed with leather, and adorned with four large pockets, the prototypical overalls he created were a workwear uniform, practical with a flash of modernism. Both he and his wife, Varvara Stepanova, along with other party faithful, designed outfits on paper that couldn’t be manufactured: fabrics and machinery were in short supply, and the constructivists’ brave new wardrobe was never made for general use. Instead, Rodchenko created sets for theatrical productions such as Vladimir Mayakovsky’s The Bedbug, which became the testing ground for his designs. His personal jumpsuits were sewn by Stepanova, who had a much-prized Singer sewing machine.
Getty Images: Universal History Archive
Alexander Rodchenko, 1924.
Rodchenko’s clothes and his art shared the same graphic sensibilities; clear-cut lines and boxy, arithmetic approaches underpinned his striking work. His bold and optimistic doctrine translated to his wardrobe, in strong silhouettes that were largely gender-neutral. Strength was an aspirational characteristic for both men and women during this time, and, on the whole, the constructivist ideal made no room for sexy or fussy womenswear. Red and black color-blocking fueled Rodchenko’s workwear designs and later the graphic art he produced for films, including Battleship Potemkin in 1925, as well as his influential “Books!” advertising poster for the Lengiz Publishing House a year earlier. All the propaganda he was commissioned to generate married form and function and focused on optimism about the future. He was pragmatic in approach, diverse in creative output, and uncompromising in his support of communism. In his work under the volatile direction of first Lenin, then Stalin, Rodchenko toed the party line enthusiastically: he did what he was asked and promoted his country in every way he could.
Rodchenko met Picasso only once, when he visited Paris in 1925 for a Russian constructivist exhibition. However, neither artist could speak the other’s language, so they couldn’t talk to each other.
Rodchenko’s principles deeply connected with everything he did. His sculptures, such as Spatial Constructions no. 12 (1920), used widely available materials, such as plywood cut into a sequence of rings that could be unfolded and refolded from two to three dimensions and back again. His painting Pure Red Color, Pure Blue Color, Pure Yellow Color (1921) was his declaration that art was “over.” His compelling photography, including Stairs (1930) and the Young Pioneers series (1932), have a simple elegance and modernity, prefiguring the high-voltage black-and-white editorial work of 1970s image makers such as Helmut Newton. In the 1980s, his graphic design—with its recipe of unusual angles, closeups, full-page face shots, and radical typography—influenced the art direction of many magazines, including The Face. Neville Brody, the magazine’s art director at the time, reworked Rodchenko’s vision and celebrated his graphic design skills in its typography. The Face’s 1985 “Killer” shoot featuring a thirteen-year-old model, Felix Howard, is still seen as the epitome of style-magazine covers.
I want to take some quite incredible photographs that have never been taken before . . . pictures which are simple and complex at the same time, which will amaze and overwhelm people. . . . I must achieve this so that photography can begin to be considered a form of art.
—Alexander Rodchenko, diary entry, March 14, 1934
Rodchenko is among the least, and most, likely influences on fashion today. His ethics and politics may be out of kilter with the “me generation” of consumption, but the threads of his inspiration are style-forward. In the 1960s, the Italian design house Pucci used sharp color-blocking on shift dresses with boldly simple silhouettes that suggest the power of constructivism as well as the youthquake then waking up the world. Rodchenko is an easy reserve to tap, as the uncomplicated, robust clarity of his work appeals to passionate statement-making. For example, it’s hard not to see Rodchenko in the past collections of Russian designer Gosha Rubchinskiy, who has more right than most to connect to constructivism. The hammer-and-sickle motifs he used on red-and-black sportswear and tracksuits—the workwear equivalent of Rodchenko’s overalls—are symbols of the proletariat, the history of youth, and, of course, the Soviet Union. The graphic constructivist elements were infused throughout Rubchinskiy’s spring/summer 2016 collection. It’s not something the designer chooses to hide: that same year, Rubchinskiy was seen taking Kanye West around Moscow’s Multimedia Art Museum, where Rodchenko’s work was on exhibit.
The Norman Parkinson Archives/Iconic Images: © Iconic Images/Norman Parkinson
Jerry Hall, photographed by Norman Parkinson on location in Russia in 1975. This shoot for British Vogue was styled by Grace Coddington, and the images were inspired by Rodchenko’s use of Russian iconography for graphic effect.
Issey Miyake’s diamond-shaped kimono silhouettes and his early 1976 Cocoon Coat, too, are enigmatically evocative of Rodchenko. Mikaye and other Japanese designers, including Yohji Yamamoto, introduced such authoritative contours to the West in the early 1980s; they were tuned to a way of expressing femininity that had little to do with a traditional Parisian hourglass figure. Ironically, Rodchenko’s revolutionary inspiration was most apparent during the money-fueled ostentatiousness of the 1980s; those large, glossy shoulder pads on the Thierry Mugler catwalk in 1988 reflected a constructivist love of angular structures. Although Rodchenko felt that designer clothes were the epitome of bourgeois susceptibilities and needed rebooting, these two creatives are linked by Mugler’s declaration that he wanted his “models to be bigger, stronger and taller than common mortals”—in rather the same way that Rodchenko wanted his designs to empower the masses. The Soviet artist may or may not have approved, but the message and medium are the same.
Rodchenko was a great practical joker, and his favorite trick was the “tearing the thumb apart” prank, where, with sleight of hand, the thumb appears chopped in two.