Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair: Notes on the Vinok

A Ukranian beauty wearing traditional clothes

and a spectacular floral headdress

The penchant for wearing flowers in one's hair was not, of course, something that originated in San Francisco during the Summer of Love; peoples all around the world have been adorning themselves in this fashion for millennia. However, I'm particularly fascinated (at the moment) by the Ukranian floral headdress known in English as the vinok.

Traditionally worn by girls and unmarried women, the vinok has its origins in fertility rites that pre-date Christianity. Signifying virginity, the vinok was also believed to offer protection against evil spirits and followers of Slavic neopaganism - known as Rodnovery - continue to attach magical significance to the vinok.

Whilst mostly worn on festive occasions and holy days, since the 2014 Ukranian revolution the vinok has been increasingly worn in daily life as an expression of national pride and völkisch identity. This might cause concern amongst those suspicious of reactionary populism in Europe. However, it might be noted that the vinok is also often worn by the topless activists of Femen, for whom it signifies a new, insubordinate and heroic model of femininity.*

It might also be noted, finally, that the vinok has influenced the world of fashion and featured in several recent catwalk collections, including the Comme des Garçons Homme Plus Spring 2016 menswear collection, where models wore botanical crowns in a show entitled Armour of Peace:

* Note: it's not coincidental, of course, that although now based in Paris, Femen was founded in the Ukraine and is still led by a Ukranian woman, Inna Shevchenko. Readers might like to know that the Femen Flower Crown - handmade by activists - is available to buy for €35.00 on the Femen website: click here.

Pretty in Pink (Notes on the Engendering of Baby Mia)

Baby Mia in a salmon pink cardigan

I.

Now that baby Mia is recognisably human - though still outside language - she is being colour-encoded by her parents within a traditional gender stereotype. In other words, she's being assigned a romantic and floral model of femininity (sweet-natured, sensitive, girly) and taught how to look, to act, and to think of herself as pretty in pink.   

However, like everything, the colour pink as sign and symbol is itself subject to changing cultural interpretation and reinterpretation; it has no essential character and can just as easily be tied to a model of masculinity should it become desirable or fashionable to do so. Indeed, young boys in the 19th century often wore pink, whilst their sisters were dressed in blue and white.

It wasn't until the early-mid-20th century that the colour became almost exclusively associated with girls and ladylike women - Mamie Eisenhower's decision to wear a pink dress at her husband's inauguration as US President in 1953 being a crucial factor in this latter association.

It also replaced lavender as the colour associated with male homosexuality and effeminacy; the Nazis obliging queer inmates of concentration camps to wear outfits embroidered with a pink triangle (though sadly not with matching accessories).      

Meanwhile, the Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli had created a bold and assertive new variety of the colour in 1931 - so-called Shocking Pink - made by mixing magenta with a small amount of white; a shade much loved by Surrealists at the time and by punk rockers in the 1970s looking to turn the world day-glo.

Sadly, many parents of baby girls still prefer to opt for a more muted princess pink that is more Barbara Cartland than Poly Styrene ...    

II.

Interestingly, the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), in New York, recently had an exhibition entitled Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Color (2018-19), which emphasised the provocative potential of pink (not least its ability to sharply divide opinion).  

Organised by the Museum's director and chief curator Valerie Steele, the show featured approximately 80 outfits dating from the 1700s to the present, including work by Schiaparelli and a fabulous piece from the 2016 Comme des Garçons fall collection entitled 18th Century Punk.

I've no idea what kind of young woman baby Mia will grow up to be, but I do hope she'll dress like this: 

See: Valerie Steele (ed.), Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Color, (Thames and Hudson, 2018).

Click here to visit the Museum at FIT website which provides full details of the Pink exhibition and a short audio tour with Valerie Steele. 

And for a (predictable) musical bonus from the Psychedelic Furs (original 1981 version): click here.