The article, based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, studies the process of the
disintegration of the traditional system of peasant costume in the 20th
century in Hungary in the backdrop of its socio-historic context. There is a focused
attention on the period during socialism from the late 1940s to the end of the Kádár
era, also called Gulyás communism. In the examined period,
the wearing and abandonment of folk costume in local peasant communities was primarily
characteristic of women and an important part of women’s competence and decision-making.
There was an age group that experienced the dichotomy of peasant heritage and the
realities of socialist modernisation as a challenge in their own lifetime – which
they considered a great watershed. The author interviewed both the last stewards of
tradition who continued wearing costume for the rest of their lives and those who
pioneered and implemented changes and abandoned peasant costume in favor of urban
dress. The liminal period of change, the character and logic of the processes and
motivations behind decision-making were still accessible in memory, and current dressing
practices and the folklorism phenomena of the “afterlife” of costume could still be
studied in real life. The study shows that costume was the focus point of women’s
aspirations, attention, and life organization, and how the life paths of strong female
personalities were articulated around clothing. It also reveals that there was a high
level of self-awareness and strong emotional attachment in individual relationships
to clothing in the rural context, similar to – or perhaps even exceeding – the fashion-conscious,
individualized urban context. Examining the role of fashion, modernization, and individual
decisions and attitudes in traditional clothing systems is an approach that bridges
the mostly distinct study of folk costume and the problematics of dress and fashion
history research.
