Old buildings (good idea), modern building site, a combine harvester (?), factories, ships (NOT yachts or even classy boats), an industrial chemistry lab, oil refineries, airplanes, a lawn mower, …. Even ABBA would have cringed at some of the clothes.īut it is not just about the clothes. I would be hard pressed to find anything either I – or my friend – would be seen dead in. So, you might think this would be a strange book for me to buy, but having read a review on Goodreads (thanks Petra), I just could not resist.Īs the back cover says, it is “Wunderbar” – clashing colours and patterns, all the worst crimes of 60’s and 70’s fashion paraded. If I disapproved, it was surely the height of fashion, and he would buy it. If I liked something, it was clearly out of date. I have a male friend, who used to take me with him, when he shopped for clothes. For years, these alarming examples of a zeitgeist unleashed have been hidden from Western eyes…but not anymore From blindingly-bright mod go-go girls to demure peasant lasses posed with that most German of animals, the Llama, these images reveal another side of what went on behind the Berlin Wall. The result: cunning and original uses for tartan, little hats and jaunty caps, bold florals, and more swatches of pumpkin, tomato, and lemon yellow than you might find at a country fair. Pauli Girls as models, and chose the locations that represented their greatest socialist achievements-oil refineries, worker canteens, concrete office buildings, airports-to shoot their daring photographs.

They commissioned two photographers, hired St. East Germany may be most remembered for the activities of the Stasi, but now, for the first time, its secret short flirtation with fashion is revealed.įor a short period the notoriously repressive bureaucrats who ran East Germany decided to bring some color into their otherwise drab lives.

Off the Wall by Günter Rubitzsch