What is it about?
This article uses fashion to draw the common threads between Ukrainian-Jewish artist and fashion designer Sonia Delaunay and prominent interwar Parisian Romanians (Tristan Tzara, Constantin Brâncuși and Lizica Codreanu). I propose the idea of "simultaneous migrations" as a conceptual exercise linked to Delaunay's Simultaneist theories and the flourishing international community living in Paris between the two World Wars. It shows fashion’s mobility beyond and across cultural differences, identities and aesthetics through Simultaneity, focusing on her interwar Romanian connections in Paris.
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Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash
Why is it important?
In a time when cultural, ideological and identity divisions are evermore striking, this conceptual exercise using the example of Sonia Delaunay, Tristan Tzara, Constantin Brâncuși and Lizica Codreanu can offer a potential alternative blueprint to understand transnational, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary cultural negotiations between individuals, communities.
Perspectives
My hope is that this article is an example of how fashion and art can bridge, collate and resolve national, ethnic and cultural divides. It shows how a capital like Paris hosted a multicultural artistic and cultural community, with individuals from diverse and often clashing backgrounds, but who could find a common language through art and design. I thus conceive "simultaneous migrations" as a transnational, multi-coloured collage whose contrasts create new, original expressions.
Dr. Sonia Doris Andras
Gheorghe Sincai Institute for Social Studies and the Humanities
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Fashioning simultaneous migrations: Sonia Delaunay and inter-war Romanian connections, Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty, December 2022, Intellect,
DOI: 10.1386/csfb_00047_1.
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Resources
Embodying the American feminine ethos: Renegotiating Romanian women’s identity from Hollywood to Rockefeller
Postdoctoral Project Member, T6, EDERA | This contribution explores the evolving ideals of women as markers of modernity in their dialogue with the United States though women's fashion and representation. It builds upon the double understanding of embodiment as an experience mediated by culture 1 of inhabiting a physical body in relation to beauty hygiene 2 and gender 3 and as clothing the body 4 suggesting fashion and modernity 5. The aim is to identify and decode the mechanisms of gendered negotiations between Romania and the United States on fashionability and their larger implications. This chapter uses an interdisciplinary model for a textual and visual semiotic analysis of relevant interwar Romanian discourse. It offers a panoramic, multi-faceted and comparative perspective on how gender norms were invented, disseminated and applied through fashion advice literature 6. It highlights the importance of fashion in shaping women's lives to uncover interwar Romania's subtle social, cultural, ideological and artistic practices in relation to the United States. This contribution continues a larger research on how fashion-consuming women mirrored interwar Romanian political, social, cultural and economic realities and offers the framework for future fashion studies research on Romanian topics.
Romanian-American Negotiations in Education, Science, Culture, and Arts, eds. Cornel Sigmirean, Sonia D. Andraș, Roxana Mihaly
As a political model for the young democracy in interwar Romania, as a protector against threats to the sovereignty and integrity of the state, as a cultural model, and as a daily life, America represented for Romania a reference point, a factor of stability and progress. America was a model and ally of the civilized world! Unfortunately, isolated in the interwar period from the political realities on the continent, America saw how, at the end of the ‘30s, the political creation of the Paris Peace Conference collapsed, the US being invited to “abandon jazz” to enter a new war on the European continent, extended to Asia and Africa, to save civilization, alongside the UK. At the war’s end, Eastern Europe fell victim to communist totalitarianism imposed by the USSR, and its peoples were forced to abandon the Western model of civilization in favor of the communist model. However, after 45 years of communism, the American model became negotiable again as a cultural, economic, and political model for Romanians, allowing us to reconstruct essential pages in the history of interwar Romania in the context of Romanian- American relations.
Creative Negotiations. Romania–America 1920–1940, eds. Sonia D. Andraș, Roxana Mihaly
Throughout the interwar period, America’s interest in Romania grew and encompassed not only political, diplomatic, and historical aspects but also financial, cultural, and educational contributions. Thus, the Romanian- American ties throughout the interwar period suggest innate complexity and dynamism. This volume presents novel techniques and issues examined from an interdisciplinary, multi-perspective, and intercultural outlook. These approaches are derived from ideas such as discussion, negotiation, educational, and cultural communications.
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