Rebellion Is in Fashion: Ersatz Couture and Avant-Garde Design in East Berlin

For an East German state determined to make youth into the orderly, uniformed future of socialism, individual self-expression was a threat to national security. But even facing persistent scarcity and totalitarian secret police, young people's hunger for self-expression and liberty was irrepressible. In underground fashion shows and bent over their sewing machines, they stitched subversion into every seam.