Episode 5— The Sixties, Sibylle & the Berlin Wall — PT 2

East German Fashion History Blog
3 min readJun 26, 2020

Hello and thank you so much for tuning into this week’s episode which you can also find here.

As promised, you can find my bibliographic references, terms/translations and images to accompany this week’s episode as well as images from Off the Wall, by Guenter Rubitsch below.

“Frau von Heute”. Sibylle. 4/1968. Photo: Jochen Moll. Source: Sibylle: Zeitschrift fuer Mode und Kulture 1956–1995
“Frau von Heute”. Sibylle. 4/1968. Photo: Jochen Moll. Source: Sibylle: Zeitschrift fuer Mode und Kulture 1956–1995

Off the Wall: Fashion from East Germany, 1964 to 1980, Guenter Rubitzsch. Bloomsbury, 2005

Selected images. No dates indicated.

Terms/Translations

Featured poem from this episode about scarcity & lack of availabity or connections to products & clothing.

Beim Konsume keine Tante

In the Konsum store no aunt

Beim HO keine Verwante

In the HO store no relatives

Aus dem Westen kein Paket

From the West no Package

Und da frage Sie mir noch wie es mir geht

And you still ask me how I’m doing

(Source: Fashioning Socialism)

Sibylle Bergemann — photographer who joins Sibylle in 1969. Goes on to define the publication with her mysterious, austere & evocative images.

Plattenbau — “Platte” in this context, means panel / “Bau” means building this was a standarized housing complex seen throughout the German Democratic Republic and in the editorial “Trikotagen”

Source: Wikipedia

Source: MDR

VEB Massatelier — state-owned clothing workshop/factory which produced garments for the HO which also included “hoch modisch” highly fashionable garments that were sold anywhere.

VEB Exquisit — state-owned clothing workshop/factory which produced garments for the Exquisit store.

Episode 5 References

Bartlett, Djurdja. Fashion East: The Spectre That Haunted Socialism. (Cambridge, The MIT Press, 2010)

Kraser, Andreas et. al., eds. Sibylle: Zeitschrift fuer Mode und Kultur 1956–1995 (Rostock: Hartmann, 2017)

Melis, Dorothea. Sibylle: Modefotografien 1962–1994 (Leipzig: Lehmstedt Verlag, 2010)

Scheffler, Ute. Chic im Osten: Mode in der DDR (Leipzig: BuchVerlag fuer die Frau GMBH, 2010)

Stitziel, Judd. Fashioning Socialism: Clothing, Politics and Consumer Culture in East Germany. (New York: Berg Publishers, 2005)

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