Fur coat socialism: Social class and gender in socialist Yugoslavia

This article explores gendered notions of the meaning, symbolism and history of wearing a fur coat during the period of socialist Slovenia and Yugoslavia, situated within the wider context of state policy, economy, and ideology. It studies profiles of women wearing fur coats, what message they were trying to convey and how they perceived their identities of a fashionably dressed socialist woman. The main aim is to examine how socialist ideals were embodied – or contradicted – through lifestyle and image and how the display of social status and prestige through fur coats illustrates the connection between consumerism and morality in the formation of class identity. The article shows that the fur coat symbolized a complex interplay of social status, luxury, and political ideology and that the myth of equality in socialism failed to prevent people from understanding garments like fur coats as the most visible indicators of an individual's social position.