Great Moments in North Korean Fashion Design

In our last episode, we learned that Kim Jong-Il, cutting an “august” figure in his “modest-looking suits,” has “gripped people’s imagination and become a global vogue,” which I guess you can’t call entirely untrue. In today’s episode, women everywhere are tantalized by the thought of wrapping themselves in fashion designed by a government ministry. Da!

The Garment Institute of the Ministry of Foodstuff and Daily Necessities Industry has recently designed new models of dresses suitable for women’s aesthetic tastes. The institute, classifying women’s national dresses into gala and wedding ones, has developed them more beautifully and comfortably.

Holiday dresses have a mix of gorgeous and sober colors and different patterns, with girl’s skirt being a little shorter.

“Gorgeous” meaning olive drab, and “sober” meaning dark gray, with light gray and black currently under study for the next five-year plan.

Wedding dresses are charming with floral decorations for head and breast.

Two acronyms I’d never thought I’d see together: KCNA and NSFW. Now that’s something I have to see (Curtis? Naenara, perhaps?).

The institute has also designed suits, one-piece dresses, overcoats and other seasonal garments for women of different ages and figures.

Conspicuous in the designs of winter clothes is an overcoat with colorful sashes in its sleeves, collar and breast, fur-covered collar and woolen hat.

Meanwhile, the institute has made designs of various patterns including those of flowers.

Flowers, too? The decadence!

It is now widely acknowledged that orderly socialism has done much to advance the art of fashion. Here, we see some designs produced by the U.S.S.R. Ministry of Bulk Proletarian Commodity Production, Bureau of Textile Fabrication:

Didn’t Wendy’s just have the best commercials in those days?