The period (1940-1970) was chosen not by chance. I am not yet able to disclose all the details and motives of my study, but I can present some of the information in the study and report that it will have an implied impact on 2022 May in the exhibition “Lithuanian Fashion Stories. 1920-2000” at the Museum of Applied Art and Design at Vilnius. I will present clothes and objects which I found while collecting important information for the research in the show board. Also, I will introduce the circumstances of their discovery, I will present you the owners of objects and the people who contributed to the discovery.
It is important to know that 1940-1970 was a rather difficult year for Lithuania. The government has changed three times. Soviets, Nazis and again Soviets. Two wars took place: the Second World War, which affected everyone, and the partisan war that took place in Lithuanian forests, trying to resist the Soviet occupation. All this was accompanied by massive population movements caused by the Holocaust, exile to the Stalin gulag, running to the West at the end of the war, German and Polish repatriation, rural migration to the city, the flow of emigrants from the USSR. War, occupation, deportation lead to poverty, looting, loss of property. It was a cruel period for fashion, it really made a negative impact on it. Since the 1960s, the economy began to recover a bit, a new post-war generation was growing up, life became easier a little bit, people had more hope, money, things and the desire to dress was emerging.