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ABSTRACT
This article explores the careers of young fashion designers as entrepreneurs in Russia. It discusses entrepreneurial experiences and labour practices of fashion designers in the context of precarity: that is, the structural conditions characterized by a lack of social, economic and emotional security caused by a shift of responsibilities for the labour market from the state to the citizens. The article takes the perspective of designers’ agency and answers the question of how young fashion entrepreneurs deal with such structural conditions using state support, community support, organizational practices and emotional management. The article also focuses on creative labour in the broader context of the circumstances of a creative class in an authoritarian state. We argue that in today’s Russia, the discourse on the creative class is perhaps more important than the discourse on precarity, since belonging to the creative class is a source of political identity for fashion designers. The issue of precarity, then, can become a further basis for solidarity and political action. The research draws from 21 in-depth interviews with fashion designers and experts conducted in the cities of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk between 2015 and 2016.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Olga Gurova (PhD, Cultural Studies) holds the position of Assistant Professor at the Department of Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University, Denmark. She previously served as the Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the Department of Social Research, University of Helsinki (Finland) and as a researcher at Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (Finland), National Research University – Higher School of Economics (Russia), University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (USA), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA) and Central European University (Hungary). Her research interests include cultural studies, sociology of consumption and everyday life, fashion studies, socialist and postsocialist cultures, social-network analysis, qualitative methods of social research and innovative methods of teaching. She is the author of Fashion and the Consumer Revolution in Contemporary Russia (London, New York: Routledge, 2015) and Soviet Underwear: Between Ideology and Everyday Life (Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2008).
Daria Morozova (M. Soc.Sci) holds Master’s degree from the University of Helsinki. She has also worked as a researcher in the projects on consumption practices and micro fashion enterprises. The former have been focused on the habits of the consumers from the post-Soviet societies settled in Europe, whereas the latter have approached fashion field from the perspective of labour force within it. She has co-authored (with Gurova) an article “A critical approach to sustainable fashion: Practices of clothing designers in the Kallio neighbourhood of Helsinki” published in the Journal of Consumer Culture. In addition, she has published several works on school choice among the immigrant families.
Notes
1. On the rise of independent fashion designers in Russia see, for instance, Fedorova Citation2014.
2. See, for example, Cherkudinova Citation2013
3. See Kologreeva Citation2013
4. See Mirsiyapova Citation2013
5. For instance, Minpromtorg Rossii Citation2016
6. Crisis positively influenced Russian fashion designers. See Reshetnik Citation2015.
7. This has recently been done in Moscow. See The Moscow Times Citation2016.
8. See, for instance, Eshun Citation2013.
9. See Naharnet Citation2016.
10. Incubator of young fashion designers group Vkontakte.
11. See the webpage of New Russian fashion industry forum, open.be-in.ru/eng
12. See the webpage of Lambada market, lmbd.ru/