Introduction
Over the past decade, a new form of patriotic dress has emerged in several countries, including Russia and Poland. Popular fashion brands, designers, cultural and religious actors, political movements, and state officials increasingly engage in the visual and material construction of national identity through clothing. Combat trousers and T-shirts printed with famous historical battles, as well as folk motifs on dresses and skirts, have been sold in dozens of web and offline stores featuring “patriotic clothes” in Poland. Russian ladies appear on social media wearing blouses with portraits of Vladimir Putin and “old Russian” dresses. While the use of fashion in national movements is not new, the current wave of patriotic dress departs from earlier models. It appears not only in the context of official commemorations but also in consumer culture, youth streetwear, Orthodox and Catholic religious initiatives, and lifestyle aesthetics promoted online.
In this article, I use the terms “patriotic dress” and “nationalist dress” with specific nuance. Patriotic dress refers to clothing that visually signals loyalty and attachment to the nation/region through symbols, colors, or commemorative motifs. It often appears in moments of mourning, protest, or everyday affiliation. Nationalist dress, by contrast, emphasizes ideological exclusivity and political identity, mobilizing sartorial codes to assert visions of the nation that are frequently tied to power struggles and cultural boundaries. In practice, the two categories overlap: brands and consumers frequently prefer the softer term “patriotic,” while the practices themselves often function within a nationalist ideological frame. For clarity, I use “patriotic dress” when referring to consumer-facing discourses and “nationalist dress” when stressing the ideological or political dimensions. I alternate the terms but note where the political connotations shift from popular patriotism to explicitly nationalist messaging.
This article focuses on two cases: Russia and Poland. It analyzes how fashion is used to demonstrate and visualize political and ideological ideas. Despite the differences in political regime, historical memory, and religious frameworks, both countries experience a growing interest in national symbols reflected in fashion. In both contexts, patriotic dress offers a visual language that relates to the past at the same time as shaping contemporary values.
Understanding nationalist dress as an ideological tool requires an engagement with the performativity of national identity. There, nationalist fashion functions as a ritualized practice, reinforcing the narratives that support imagined communities.Footnote 1 Understanding nationalist dress as an ideological medium requires a focus on the performative dimensions of national identity. In this context, clothing not only reflects affiliation but participates in ritualized acts of belonging, reinforcing the narratives of collective imaginaries of the nation. These dynamics are present not only in official state campaigns but also within everyday life, where dress and self-presentation merge the personal and the political. Then, dress becomes a space where historical memory is incorporated into daily practice, visualizing the past in the present.
Within this framework, the cases of Russia and Poland reveal both contrasting and intersecting sartorial strategies of nationalism. In Russia, nationalist fashion focuses heavily on imperial and Orthodox aesthetics, mobilizing visual references to Tsarist magnificent times as a means of supporting state legitimacy and moral authority. These stylistic choices are embedded in a broader authoritarian visual regime, in which history is selectively reactivated to support contemporary ideological aims. In Poland, by contrast, nationalist dress is shaped by narratives of resistance and loss. Here, folk motifs, commemorative symbols, and martial imagery create a tradition of martyrdom and cultural perseverance. Rather than focusing on centralized power, these forms often express defiance, focusing on historical suffering. In both cases, however, fashion functions as a medium through which political belonging is not only signaled but enacted, embodied on the individual level and disseminated across public space.
The analysis of this article is based on the concept of “imagined communities,” “banal nationalism,” and visual and sartorial semiotics. It considers the importance of the ideological role of elites, the state, and religious institutions in shaping patriotic national identity through attire. Rather than treating fashion as a surface or commercial phenomenon, it argues that in both Russia and Poland, clothing has become a medium for negotiating belonging, cultural and gender norms, historical memory, and power.
Focusing on the visual aspects of patriotic dress and their meanings in specific historical and political contexts, the article demonstrates how fashion contributes to the everyday performance of nationalism. At the same time, it analyzes deeper ideological tensions within both societies. Rather than treating fashion as a passive reflection of nationalist ideology, it argues for an understanding of dress as an active agent in shaping political discourse, unifying collective memory, and supporting national imaginaries. By merging historical references with contemporary fashion, nationalist propaganda in Russia and Poland navigates the tension between heritage and reinvention, producing sartorial expressions that are at the same time historically powerful and politically charged.
Theoretical framework: Fashion, ideology, and the politics of dress
Nationalist fashion has often been overlooked in scholarly discussions of nationalism, which tend to focus on texts, rituals, monuments, or political discourse. Yet clothing can serve as an equally powerful and immediate expression of national identity: visible, embodied, and emotionally charged. Fashion is never neutral: it is an ideological text that both reflects and constructs national identity. This article considers patriotic fashion as part of a broader set of practices through which national belonging is performed, communicated, and negotiated. Within the context of Russia and Poland, nationalist attire functions as a performative medium, reinforcing historical narratives, power structures, and cultural hierarchies.
National identity is not only imagined but also materialized, a concept drawn from Anderson’s work on imagined communities, where national consciousness is supported by imaginative role of shared symbols and collective rituals.Footnote 2 It provides an understanding of how collective identity is shaped through the internal group signs and visual codes. Nationalist fashion participates in this process by turning the body into a display, using clothing to evoke historical memory, cultural values, and emotional ties to the nation. Clothing becomes a ritualized expression of belonging, an idea further reinforced by Billig’s theory of banal nationalism, which highlights the everyday mechanisms that sustain national ideologies and draws attention to the subtle forms through which national identity is reinforced.Footnote 3 In contrast to loud propaganda, fashion functions at the level of the everyday and the intimate, merging itself in the lived experience of national identity.Footnote 4
However, nationalist fashion is not merely about representing identity, but also about performing it, and the meanings of clothing are not fixed or neutral. Fashion is shaped by broader ideological forces, including the decisions of elites, state actors, and religious institutions. Based on Barthes’ semiotic analysis of fashion, this study understands nationalist dress as a coded system of signs, where historical motifs, religious symbols, and militaristic aesthetics serve as vehicles for ideological communication.Footnote 5 Whether through the resurgence of Romanov-inspired embroidery in Russia or the militarization of Polish patriotic fashion, these aesthetic choices do not simply reference the past; they repurpose it for contemporary political use. Here, the ideas of cultural hegemony, civic nationalism, and nationalism as a cultural field help to frame fashion as a space where symbolic power is exercised.Footnote 6 Clothing is never just about aesthetics; it is always also about authority, legitimacy, and exclusion. As Alexander Maxwell demonstrates, “sartorial nationalism” is not a new phenomenon but part of a long European tradition in which clothing becomes a medium of national politics and moral regulation, from absolutist national uniforms to folk costumes rebranded as national emblems.Footnote 7 Drawing on Tomc’s insight that visual representations of dress have long been foundational to nation-building with visual strategies (folk revival, costume, spectacle) as part of an ongoing lineage of national identity through dress (in nineteenth-century America), this article argues that modern patriotic fashion in Russia and Poland continues this tradition, though with new media, new politics, and new tensions.Footnote 8 Irene Guenther’s analysis underscores that fashion can function simultaneously as propaganda, distraction, and promise a means of projecting ideological cohesion even amid crisis.Footnote 9 She shows how Nazi cultural institutions such as the Deutsches Modeamt sought to institutionalize a “German fashion” as a cultural weapon against foreign influence. While arising in a very different historical context, this illustrates a broader mechanism by which states attempt to position fashion as a marker of sovereignty and cultural independenceFootnote 10 (Guenther Reference Guenther2004, 13). In this sense, patriotic and nationalist fashion in Russia and Poland continues a longer history of dress being mobilized for cultural and political ends. As Djurdja Bartlett shows, fashion under socialism was never merely about clothing but a political instrument, designed to embody the ideals of socialist modernity and to signal the superiority of the socialist system. Following her, socialist fashion was a “political technology,” a state-sponsored system where clothing functioned as a medium of ideology and social engineering.Footnote 11
At the same time, the study engages with scholarship on authoritarian aesthetics and visual politics to contextualize how state-directed nationalist fashion operates as a tool of power. In Paulicelli’s work on fashion under fascism, dress is shown to function as a disciplinary and unifying mechanism, regulating the body in accordance with ideological dictates. Paulicelli argues that under Mussolini, fashion was recruited as a tool to forge a distinct national identity, with the regime attempting to discipline the social body in dress and manners while promoting domestic production and autarchic styles. Her analysis of the Ente Nazionale della Moda illustrates how authoritarian regimes establish institutional frameworks to regulate style and align clothing with political values. In a similar way, patriotic fashion in Russia gains prominence not through market centrality, but through symbolic validation by state and church institutions.Footnote 12 This is particularly relevant in Russia, where patriotic fashion is often aligned with state-driven Orthodox conservatism, reinforcing a gendered and moralized vision of national identity. Meanwhile, in Poland, McVeigh’s insights on the politics of commemoration help explain how clothing serves as a means of historical activation, allowing wearers to engage in a performative re-enactment of national resistance.Footnote 13
The article is based on visual and fashion theory in order to explore how dress functions not only as a cultural expression of identity but also as a political statement. It considers how state-sponsored and grassroots actors engage in the symbolic work of selecting, promoting, or rejecting particular styles and historical references. In the cases of Russia and Poland, fashion becomes a way of staging national history and ideology through forms that are visible, wearable, and emotionally resonant.
Focusing on these theoretical perspectives, this study presents fashion not as an accessory to nationalism but as a fundamental mechanism of its visualization that functions simultaneously as a historical archive, a political symbol, and a lived experience.
Methodology: A visual and sartorial approach to nationalist fashion
This article combines visual analysis with historical and discursive contextualization. It treats fashion as a site of political meaning and symbolic power, shaped not only by individual taste or market trends but by historical memory, ideology, and elite cultural production. The material under discussion includes garments, visual branding, references to historical uniforms or folk motifs, and public statements or self-representation by fashion brands and political actors.
To analyze how nationalist fashion in Russia and Poland functions as both a political instrument and a visual language, this study employs a qualitative methodology that combines visual semiotics and discourse analysis. Given that fashion operates not merely as an aesthetic phenomenon but as a materialized discourse, it requires an approach that can decipher its symbolic, ideological, and performative dimensions.Footnote 14
Central to this analysis is the understanding that clothing, much like political rhetoric or historical monuments, serves as a medium through which national identities are constructed, contested, and reinforced. Drawing from semiotic theory, this study examines how color, cut, fabric, and embellishment in nationalist attire function as visual signifiers, encoding broader ideological narratives.Footnote 15 The use of Tsarist embroidery in Russian patriotic fashion, for example, does not merely reference historical aesthetics but instead mobilizes a carefully curated memory of imperial continuity, legitimizing contemporary state ideology. Similarly, in Poland, the incorporation of Warsaw Uprising symbols into contemporary dress operates as an act of historical re-enactment, transforming past resistance into a present-day marker of national perseverance.Footnote 16
The two cases, Russia and Poland, have been selected not only for symmetry but for their differences as well. The analysis does not treat “countries” themselves as actors but examines designers, brands, influencers, religious leaders, and state officials who mobilize fashion as a political resource. These actors frame clothing as a medium of identity, morality, or resistance, thereby embedding nationalist messages into consumer culture. These actors in the case of Russia represent a state-driven model of action, in which nationalist fashion is actively promoted by official institutions and linked to imperial nostalgia and Orthodox morality. In Poland, by contrast, these actors show a more grassroots model, where nationalist dress is shaped by their perception of historical trauma, martyrdom, and resistance. While both Russia and Poland feature a wide spectrum of fashion brands and initiatives, from grassroots designers to commercial ventures, this article concentrates on those actors whose ideological visibility makes them especially significant in shaping nationalist aesthetics. In Russia, this means state-linked, Orthodox, and elite cultural projects; in Poland, grassroots patriotic brands and cultural producers. Both cases make it possible to explore how fashion participates in the production of nationalist narratives, but in different ideological frameworks: authoritarian centralism on the one hand, and romantic-nationalist commemoration on the other.
The cases analyzed in this article were selected on the basis of their ideological visibility rather than representativeness of the fashion industry as a whole. They are examples that became central reference points in nationalist and patriotic debates, circulating through media, online communities, and public discourse. This purposive sampling allows the article to trace the most politically significant sartorial articulations of nationalism in Russia and Poland, without aiming to exhaustively cover the full spectrum of contemporary fashion production.
The analysis applies semiotic and discourse-based methods, operating at three levels of discourse: production (the intentions and framings of designers, state actors, and religious authorities), text (the visual and material qualities of garments themselves), and reception (the ways in which audiences, online communities, and media interpret or contest these designs). This tri-level approach enables the analysis to trace how nationalist meaning is constructed, circulated, and challenged.
In the Russian case, I examine how visual codes such as military cuts, Orthodox modesty, or imperial insignia are mobilized to support a particular vision of national continuity and moral order.Footnote 17 In the Polish case, the focus is on historical references to uprisings, folk revival aesthetics, and the gendered dimensions of patriotic dress. While the two countries differ politically and historically, in both contexts fashion serves to express, promote, and regulate meanings of national identity.
Although Soviet-era clothing and visual codes have had some influence, particularly in Russia, the emphasis here is on the longer trajectory that connects current nationalist aesthetics to 19th-century models. These continuities are more relevant for understanding the symbolic strategies at play in both countries. Where relevant, the legacy of the Communist period is acknowledged briefly, but the main analytical lens remains focused on the longer arc of national revival and symbolic construction.Footnote 18
By weaving together visual, semiotic, and discursive methodologies, this study aims to reveal how fashion operates as a dynamic cultural and ideological force, one that is not only shaped by history but also actively reshapes how national histories are remembered, performed, and embodied.
New nationalist attire
New nationalism, as a term and phenomenon, began to appear in scholarly research and to be visualized in media discourse over the past two decades.Footnote 19 It is still evolving and remains difficult to define precisely. As such, it serves as an umbrella term encompassing various global developments. In his 2017 monograph Liquid Nationalism, Bianchini describes new nationalism as a highly differentiated and fluid phenomenon.Footnote 20 Already in 2006, Gingrich and Banks offered a working definition focused on Western Europe, calling it “the re-emergence of nationalism under different global and transnational conditions. … The most visible ‘new’ aspects in current European nationalisms are due to such interactions with, and reactions towards, several of these fairly recent transnational and global developments.”Footnote 21
While Gingrich and Banks focused on Western European contexts, research on Eurasian and Eastern-Central European forms of new nationalism remains limited. However, in the years that followed, countries of the former Eastern Bloc also began to develop their own nationalist styles in response to local and global political shifts. These expressions combine elements of global populist strategy, particularly the use of media and visual messaging, with older local traditions of self-representation and ideological branding. Unlike their Western counterparts, these movements often merge visual propaganda aesthetics from the Communist period with rhetoric and symbolism rooted in late 19th and early 20th-century nationalism.Footnote 22 This article explores how new nationalist actors from the former Eastern Bloc visualize their ideology and propaganda through distinctive forms of dress and performance. In the last decade, these new forms of nationalist attire have become increasingly fashionable — on the one hand, promoted by political leaders, activists, musicians, visual artists, festival organizers, curators, and ideologically aligned scholars; on the other, embraced by mass audiences who wear and circulate these looks both online and in everyday life. While the revival of nationalist dress began in the early 2000s, its development accelerated with the rise of social media and global digital networks.
New nationalism is often linked to contemporary populist politics. The global populist right, from India to Hungary, uses clothing and visual aesthetics as tools of self-promotion. In the post-Communist world, these trends intersect with ongoing processes of national, ethnic, and religious self-reinvention. This began in the aftermath of 1989 and was later challenged by the European Union accession process, the 2008 economic crisis, the 2015 migration crisis, and, in the cases of Russia and Ukraine, by a series of armed conflicts, including Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In this context, state propaganda politicized a wide array of cultural practices — including fashion and performance — transforming them into ideologically charged visual tools disseminated via mass media.
This post-Communist and post-imperial self-reinvention offered local elites: political, cultural, religious, and academic — new opportunities to visualize patriotic ideology. Through fashion, they could give emotional form to abstract messages and distribute them across multiple platforms. As Zygmunt Bauman argued, consumption and identity are tightly linked in contemporary societies. In Liquid Modernity and other writings, he showed how elites “offer” ideological content in aesthetic, emotionally appealing forms, inviting consumers to participate through desire and identification.Footnote 23 As Bauman put it, “This society of ours is a society of consumers, and just as the rest of the world as-seen-and-lived by consumers, culture turns into a warehouse of meant-for-consumption products – each vying for the shifting/drifting attention of prospective consumers in the hope of attracting them and holding their attention for a bit longer than a fleeting moment.”Footnote 24
My research traces how this visual nationalism merges aesthetic, religious, and ideological forms into a coherent political performance. What begins as cultural expression becomes part of state messaging. Global fashion influences, once imported into post-Communist contexts, are filtered through local media and reworked by nationalist artists, musicians, designers, and influencers, many of whom operate in close alliance with political or religious institutions.
The connection between dress and nationalist ideology is not new. What is striking today is the revival of social and visual patterns rooted in 19th-century nationalism.Footnote 25 Contemporary nationalist movements react against globalization, which they associate with individualism, alienation, and cultural loss. In this way, they reframe fashion not as global consumerism, but as a tool to restore emotional ties and collective belonging. The logic is not unlike that of 19th-century nationalists who saw industrialization and urban migration as dislocating forces and sought to rebuild communities through shared symbols, rituals, and aesthetics.
Media today plays a similar role to that played by newspapers, photography studios, and early cinema in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At that time, national and folkloric costumes were circulated via postcards, studio portraits, family albums, and visual propaganda. The visuality of nationalism was central to its spread and internalization. During the 20th century, the nationalist narrative was suppressed under Communist regimes, which promoted a Soviet or internationalist identity instead.Footnote 26
The collapse of the Communist bloc and the parallel erosion of the classical nation-state model, combined with the impact of globalization and the rise of new populist movements, laid the groundwork for the emergence of new forms of nationalism and their visual expressions. This new nationalist attire draws selectively from global fashion and media, while translating it into local ideological frameworks. The result is a symbolic language that blends aesthetics, politics, and emotion—making nationalist identity something that can be seen, worn, and shared.
Russia: Imperial aesthetics, orthodox morality, and visual authority
In today’s Russia, patriotic fashion plays a visible role in expressing political identity and moral order. A wide range of actors: fashion designers, influencers, clerical figures, government officials, and commercial brands, participate in the production and promotion of nationalist dress. Rather than appearing as uniform state propaganda, these styles are often framed in cultural or religious terms, drawing on a complex set of historical references, including imperial court fashion, Orthodox modesty codes, and military aesthetics. What links them is their shared engagement with nationalist ideology, their function in performing loyalty, and their reliance on visual markers that evoke a glorified Russian past.
Of course, Russia also hosts numerous independent, folk-inspired, or globally oriented fashion brands that are not directly connected to state ideology. However, this article focuses on the most ideologically visible and politically mobilized forms of patriotic fashion, supported or framed by state institutions, religious authorities, and pro-government designers. It is in these cases that my analysis concentrates.
The Russian cases, such as boyar-inspired gowns from the House of Russian Apparel, Putin T-shirts, Orthodox modesty fashion, and patriotic face masks, demonstrate how Barthes’s semiotics can be applied to nationalist dress. Each example mobilizes signifiers with ideological meaning: traditional silhouettes functioning as signs of historical continuity and Orthodox spirituality, the image of Putin shifting between authority, masculinity, and loyalty, religiously inflected modest attire embodying moral renewal, and face masks transforming pandemic protection into patriotic duty. Together, these cases illustrate how the semiotics of dress produce visible signs of Russianness, reinforcing the role of fashion as a medium of ideological communication.
Patriotic attire has been developed there in three main directions by government-supported designers working with political and religious leaders. The first direction is neo-folk, often used by Eastern-Central European Neo-Pagan Native Faith Rodnovery groups (modern Slavic Pagans) in various performances and on social media. This style focuses on Russian and Slavic folklore elements: embroidery and patterns, which imaginatively link patriotic Russian attire with other Slavic ethnic groups. The second direction is Russian Orthodox fashion, still under development, aimed at providing modest yet modern clothes to Russian Orthodox individuals, especially women. The third one is a president-oriented direction, focusing on various depictions of the president’s portrait on different types of clothes.Footnote 27 This tripartite system reflects a broader tension within Russian nationalism between ethnic exclusivity and civic patriotism — what Eliseev terms the ongoing debate between grazhdanstvennost’ (civic belonging) and etnichnost’ (ethnic belonging).Footnote 28
Here I will focus on the most ideologically significant ones: the revival of “traditional” folk dress and portraits of the Russian president. Since the early modern age, clothes have held political significance in Russia. During the reign of Tsar Peter the Great (1682–1725), the traditional Russian dress was abandoned by the elite, partially by force and partially voluntarily. The appearance of lower social groups was also changed, sometimes forcibly, by laws that Tsar Peter issued to align with European dress codes, such as shaving beards and wearing short cloaks or wigs.Footnote 29 During the 19th century, Russian dress regulations introduced by the authorities prescribed that each social, professional, and ethnic group should dress in accordance with its status, “unifying” its members visually, preventing diversity, and creating “uniforms.”Footnote 30
After the Spring of Nations, a revived interest in folklore and “national” costumes emerged, alongside the rediscovery of historical cultures. Across Europe, elites hosted costume balls, including the Romanovs. In 1883 and 1903, they held elaborate Russian costume balls where the royal family wore 17th-century Russian noble dress. These events emphasized a direct connection between Russian imperial identity and pre-Petrine sartorial tradition.Footnote 31
During the Soviet period and especially during the Cold War, fashion itself became a battlefield, where socialist states sought to prove their cultural legitimacy against the West by promoting a distinctly “national” and ideologically correct style.Footnote 32 She details how Soviet designers sought to reconcile modern technology and art with socialist ideals, turning garments into tools of social transformation rather than mere commodities. Bartlett argues that the eventual decline of state fashion houses did not mean a neutralization of fashion’s political role: the very structures and habits formed under socialism shaped later negotiations of identity and taste.Footnote 33
In the last two decades, Vladimir Putin’s regime has cultivated patriotic aesthetics across state, church, and commercial channels. Lena Jonson highlights that since 2012, Russian state cultural policy has undergone a marked conservative turn, positioning culture as a tool for moral restoration, patriotism, and defense of “traditional values,” often in close cooperation with the Orthodox Church.Footnote 34 This ideological environment provided fertile ground for patriotic and nationalist fashion to emerge as part of a broader project of cultural mobilization, where the state actively promotes symbols of Orthodoxy, militarism, and anti-liberalism as markers of national identity. Designers, influencers, retailers, clergy, and public officials have promoted “Old Russian” attire as a visual embodiment of patriotism.
One of the most prominent tendencies is the revival of garments associated with the Tsarist period.
One of such institutions is the “House of Russian Apparel,” founded in 2011 by Valentina Averianova. It produces garments inspired by 17th-century Russian boyar attire, merging historical elements with modern silhouettes and colors, including long robes, heavy fabrics, fine embroidery, and silhouettes of the Russian imperial court. Its slogan is: “The revival of the Motherland’s greatness through the ideals of Holy Russia. Russian style in the modern world — that’s the national identity of the people.”Footnote 35 These items are not designed simply as nostalgic costumes but are marketed as expressions of national dignity and moral qualities. Their theatricality, often staged in impressive and rich palace areas or Orthodox interiors, links contemporary identity with a stylized vision of imperial splendor and spirituality. These stylizations function as a visual response to perceived threats, cultural, geopolitical, or moral, and offer a feeling of national continuity, using historical imagery for present ideological purposes. This use of historical imagery for present ideological purposes echoes broader trends in Russian memory politics, where even deceased political figures, such as Khrushchev, become subjects of symbolic contestation.Footnote 36
The House’s “Revival” collection, launched during the 2014 Crimea annexation, aimed to mark the event through patriotic attire. With close ties to the Russian Orthodox Church, the House of Russian Apparel operates at the intersection of religion and patriotism. Its website features articles and community forums where Orthodox women share selfies in stylized national dress, often alongside children and husbands. These visual affirmations of identity link family, faith, and nation in everyday contexts.Footnote 37 Thus, the “boyar”-style gowns in the House of Russian Apparel’s collections deploy cut, fabric, and silhouette as signifiers of pre-modern Russian heritage. The signifieds range from national continuity to Orthodox modesty, projecting an image of timeless Russianness. In Barthesian terms, the sign produced is one of civilizational depth and sacred tradition, aligning contemporary fashion with the ideological narrative of Russia as a spiritually exceptional nation.Footnote 38
Religious fashion brands such as Miryanka, Mironositsy, and Dikona go further in defining patriotic dress codes through the language of piety and protection and cater to Orthodox women seeking modest yet feminine styles. These brands promote “modest” clothing that avoids Western trends and emphasizes femininity as tied to motherhood, obedience, and national service. Skirts are long, sleeves cover the arms, and color palettes often recall traditional icons or peasant dress. In their advertising, these designers often use terms like “moral armor” or “protective femininity,” suggesting that dress plays a defensive role in an era of spiritual conflict. These designs promote long dresses, head coverings, and maternity-friendly clothes, rejecting Western fashion norms. Their emphasis on femininity, modesty, and maternity aligns with Russia’s pro-natalist ideology and conservative moral framework.Footnote 39
The Orthodox Church itself has not launched official collections, but numerous sermons, online communities, and advice platforms provide clear indications of what should or should not be worn by a patriotic Orthodox woman, and the owners and designers of Orthodox stores and their collections are in tight contact with the Church administration. According to the prominent archpriest Alexii, “National clothing, like a folk song, is the frame on the icon of the Russian soul. Russian people must understand — the revival of the Russian State will begin at the moment when people start coming to the church in national dress, which will be a sign for both angels and humans.”Footnote 40
Meanwhile, another stream of nationalist fashion centers on Vladimir Putin’s image. T-shirts with Putin’s portrait: sometimes hyper-masculine, sometimes ironic, sometimes overtly erotic, are widely sold and worn, blending aesthetic and emotional appreciation with political loyalty. During the 2018 presidential election, the patriotic youth movement Set’ (Сеть), founded in 2013, linked to the Kremlin’s internal policy directorate and financed in part through presidential grants, launched a striking T-shirt collection with heart-shaped cleavage cut-outs held together by an image of Putin’s hands. State-aligned media and the movement’s own channels promoted these shirts as symbols of youth engagement and devotion to the president.Footnote 41
There, the printed image of Putin’s upper body and grasping hands functions as the signifier, while the signifieds include state authority, virile energy, and a personalized form of patriotic devotion. The heart-shaped cut-out is not an incidental flourish but part of the semiotic design: the wearer’s exposed skin completes the visual composition so that body and garment together form a single sign of intimate loyalty to the leader. The design eroticizes the relationship between citizen and ruler, transforming the female body into an active medium for political affect and desire. At the same time, the composition sexualizes the male leader himself. Putin’s carefully cultivated public persona: judo master, hunter, bare-chested muscle outdoorsman, is transposed into fashion as an object of erotic fascination. His printed torso and enclosing hands invite viewers to read the president not only as a distant father figure or guarantor of national strength but also as an attractive, virile man whose physicality becomes a component of national pride.
This case shows how gender operates within Russian patriotic fashion as more than decoration. Women appear as willing participants who mobilize their own bodies to display political devotion, yet their agency is framed through a sexualized performance that reinforces traditional hierarchies. Simultaneously, the leader’s own image is eroticized and commodified, turning masculine vitality into a form of soft power. Together, these elements illustrate how Russian nationalist fashion fuses erotic play, gendered embodiment, and state-aligned propaganda, using both the female body and the leader’s stylized masculinity to naturalize political authority and to turn the intimacy of desire into a tool of ideological communication. As Elena Kalinina argues, patriotic fashion in Russia often operates through irony and stiob: playful or exaggerated references to Soviet and wartime symbols that appear humorous but in fact normalize loyalty and identification with the state. She demonstrates that garments featuring images of Putin or WWII insignia exemplify how irony transforms into political affect: what may look like parody nevertheless reproduces patriotic sentiment and reinforces state-centered identity politics.Footnote 42 Although these labels occupy only a minor share of the commercial fashion market, their symbolic impact far exceeds their economic scale: through church patronage, state-aligned youth movements, and saturation in pro-government media, they have become disproportionately visible in the politics of dress.
The phenomenon reached global attention in 2016, when Emirati designer Mona al Mansouri unveiled a “Putin dress” at the Forum of Arab Culture as a present for Vladimir Putin’s birthday, placing it within a long tradition of political gift-exchange. It featured Putin in his judo suit (a garment so frequently used in official imagery that it has become one of his iconic visual signatures), complete with angel wings holding a globe on the front, and the Kremlin on the back, visualizing Russia as a benevolent global power. On one level, the dress articulated a message of unity and peace between Russia and the Arab world, symbolically casting Putin as a world savior. On another, it fused sacral iconography (wings and cherubs) with a state emblem (the Kremlin) and masculinized body politics (the judo pose), creating a messianic hybrid of political theology and soft-power branding. The judo image pointed to Putin’s own cultivation of the athletic, disciplined body as a symbol of leadership. By turning that image into couture, the dress materialized the idea that the leader’s body is not merely private but a visual emblem of the nation’s power and resilience. The cherub wings framed Putin not only as a strongman but as a quasi-sacred protector.
In Barthesian terms, the images of judo suit, angel wings, cherubs, globe, and Kremlin operated as signifiers. Their signifieds included bodily discipline and strength (judo), moral transcendence (wings/cherubs), benevolent guardianship over a world-sphere (globe), and the state’s institutional core (Kremlin). As a composite sign, the gown sacralized the political leader and fuses macho vigor with angelic protection, translating geopolitical benevolence into couture spectacle. The sky-blue field and painterly clouds further softened power into pastoral peace, emphasizing the representation of Russia as a supportive global power.Footnote 43
Widely covered by Russian and international media, the garment exemplified how leader iconography circulates transnationally and is re-interpreted across cultures, and how patriotic fashion can function as paradiplomatic performance. It demonstrated how a fashion object can act as a diplomatic token: a couture garment that simultaneously flattered a head of state and signaled a cultural partnership between Russia and parts of the Arab world, crossing national and regional boundaries while still reinforcing the authority of a specific leader.Footnote 44
During the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2022), patriotic symbolism moved to face masks. These masks appeared in “colors of victory” (military green and khaki), bearing stars, memorials, and slogans such as “thank our grandfathers for victory.” Russian designers also experimented with Slavic pagan motifs, runes, and even Putin’s face, tapping into both magical protection and ideological messaging.Footnote 45
Many of these elements recall earlier eras, particularly the 19th century, when the Tsar and Orthodox Church were central to visual nationalism. Post-Perestroika, this alliance has reemerged in a new visual regime. Designers use online media and Western marketing techniques to make patriotism appealing, especially to youth who recast it as “stylish,” viral, and fashionable. Through T-shirts, robes, selfies, and symbolism, patriotic fashion becomes not just clothing, but a cultural script.
These trends are supported not only by independent designers but also through state structures and elite cultural discourse. While there is no single official dress code, the circulation of nationalist fashion is shaped by political speeches, museum exhibitions, conservative media, and government-sponsored awards for “cultural patriotism.” The state thus plays an indirect but powerful role in setting the ideological parameters of patriotic aesthetics. This reflects what Antonio Gramsci called cultural hegemony: the ability of elites to shape consensus not only through laws or propaganda, but through the production of “common sense” embedded in habits, values, and symbols. In the Russian case, patriotic fashion becomes one such tool, making loyalty visible and desirable through the logic of beauty and tradition.
This system is also supported by what Paulicelli identified in fascist fashion regimes: the regulation of public and private life through stylized codes that align the body with the state.Footnote 46 In Russia, the merging of Orthodox morality and national visuality creates a framework in which appearance signals ethical and political alignment. To dress in a certain way: modestly, classically, militarily, is not just an aesthetic choice but a civic gesture, often framed as resistance against “Western decay.”
Although Soviet visual culture continues to influence Russian patriotic aesthetics, particularly through the figure of the soldier and collective symbols of sacrifice, the emphasis today is clearly on earlier models. Rather than referencing socialist realism or workers’ uniforms, nationalist fashion now looks to tsarist grandeur, medieval piety, and Orthodox visuality. The revival of 19th-century silhouettes and motifs, particularly for women, reinforces a gendered moral order that mirrors both imperial nostalgia and contemporary conservative politics.
The reception of patriotic fashion in Russia is far from uniform. While Orthodox and pro-Kremlin audiences circulate these styles with pride, online communities also generate irony and critique. Memes of Putin T-shirts parody the cult of personality, and international fashion media often frame them as kitsch. This contested reception demonstrates that nationalist dress is not a monolithic phenomenon but part of a wider discursive struggle over taste, identity, and power.
However, nationalist fashion in Russia, while not copying past uniforms or launching an official state collection, curates symbolic fragments into a coherent aesthetic of belonging. This aesthetic is flexible: embracing Orthodox robes, imperial coats, and military chic, but always points to a vision of Russia as pure, powerful, and historically destined. The body becomes a space for performing that vision, and fashion becomes one of its most intimate tools.
Poland: Romantic nationalism, resistance, and performative martyrdom
Polish patriotic fashion has taken a different path than its Russian counterpart. It is based not on imperial references or Orthodox morality, but rather on a romantic-nationalist tradition emphasizing martyrdom, historical sacrifice, and resistance. The core visual codes used in nationalist fashion in Poland are rooted in its difficult modern history — particularly the uprisings of the 19th century, the interwar and WWII periods, and the postwar anti-communist underground movements. Many of these codes are reused today with emotional intensity and visual clarity.
This is not to say that the Polish state or Catholic Church is absent from patriotic fashion. Certain initiatives, such as “Wear a Dress for Maria,” reveal attempts at religious influence, even if they remain marginal. Nonetheless, the more decisive drivers of Polish patriotic fashion are grassroots and commercial brands, which shape the public visibility and cultural codes of nationalist attire. Maxwell shows that folk costumes across 19th-century Europe were consciously rebranded as national uniforms, simplified and aestheticized for public display, even when they bore little resemblance to actual peasant dress.Footnote 47 Maxwell devotes an entire chapter to “folk costumes as national uniforms,” showing how nineteenth-century European movements turned regional peasant dress into powerful symbols of national unity.Footnote 48 The twenty-first-century Polish use of embroidered clothes and Slavic symbols directly echoes this longer history of folk revival as a strategy of sartorial nationalism. Polish patriotic embroidery and folk-inspired fashion similarly operate within this long tradition of reinterpreting “authentic” peasant culture as a politicized national symbol.
The subsequent cases discussed below, such as Black Protests, Donatan and Cleo’s “Slavic Girls,” and the patriotic brand Red is Bad, extend this semiotic framework into a different national context. They illustrate how semiotics can clarify the interplay of signifiers and signifieds in nationalist dress. Here too, garments and accessories operate as signifiers whose meanings shift across situations: black clothing signifying both mourning and resistance, embroidered folk blouses referring both to tradition and erotic spectacle, militarized typography bringing militancy into streetwear. These examples underline how Barthes’s semiotics clarifies the contested and gendered meanings of patriotic dress, while also highlighting the more grassroots and commercial drivers behind Polish nationalist fashion.
In the case of Poland, the tradition of visual group self-representation had already been strong during the early modern Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, when the so-called Sarmatian costume (a Baroque, Orientalized, and Turkish-influenced Polish nobility costume) became the symbol of “Polishness.”Footnote 49 In the time of the partitioned Poland (1772–1918), members of cultural, social, and political movements inspired by Romanticism and nationalism tried to depict the soul of the nation, and visualized themselves accordingly. They turned their attention to peasants, proclaiming their dress as the true Polish attire. During this time, the folk costume was reinvented and stylized as a symbol of authenticity.Footnote 50
Visual emphasis was placed on clothing, such as peasant and Sarmatian dress, as well as stylized military garments representing the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a multiethnic kingdom that existed between 1569 and 1772. The second half of the 19th century was a time of reworking national ideals and heroic imagery through a romantic lens, aiming to unify diverse groups in the partitioned Polish territories under the ideal of freedom.
In February 1861, patriotic anti-Russian protests in Warsaw led to the deaths of five demonstrators. Their funeral turned into a massive protest uniting people across religious and political divisions. This sparked a new visual form of resistance: during and after the January Uprising of 1863–64, a phenomenon known as “People’s Mourning” emerged. Women began wearing simple black garments, black jewelry made from wood or stone, and hairstyles styled in “old Polish” fashion to protest Russian rule.Footnote 51
The mourning look became a distinctly female mode of resistance, as men risked arrest if they wore patriotic colors. Women’s appearance thus became a gendered symbol of political protest. “Black Fashion” imposed aesthetic rules: black or white-only clothing, modest hairstyles, and minimal jewelry. These visual restrictions signaled unity, grief, and resistance.Footnote 52
In the last two decades, these older visual strategies have re-emerged. Folk motifs have returned as symbols of national pride. Contemporary nationalist fashion includes stylized historic battles and portraits of religious and military leaders — visible on both men’s and women’s clothing.
Since the 2010s, global fantasy aesthetics (for example, The Hobbit, Warcraft, The Witcher) have fused with Polish nationalist visual culture. One key example is the 2016–17 Polish Legends series produced by Allegro, which reimagined medieval myths in a modern setting. Female warriors appeared alongside rebranded folkloric figures, in outfits blending tradition with stylized battle gear.Footnote 53
The process of implementation of a global digital influence into a dress piece bearing a local patriotic context can be traced by the example of Polish artist Jakub Różalski, whose artistic adaptation of global gaming messages into the local Polish history was rapidly transferred into patriotic T-shirts sold by the Red is Bad store, both offline and online. His artistic series and video-game project World of 1920+, which also served as a base for the board game Scythe, alludes to the Polish-Soviet war of 1919–1921. The heroic myth of Poland as savior of Europe during the Polish-Soviet war (1919–1921) was given new visual form. There, the artist himself emphasized the importance of this war for Europe as a whole, claiming that Poland stopped the Bolshevik revolution. These series are influenced on the one hand by Polish nineteenth-century historical painting and on the other by global science-fiction and fantasy gaming fashions: huge robots, retro-futuristic steampunk elements, and fighting male and sexualized female protagonists (whose stereotypical wilderness is underscored by wild beasts such as the tiger that sometimes accompanies them). In his visual creation of alternative history, nineteenth-century hussar squadrons appear alongside events from the early twentieth century and World War II. The artist highlights Polish historical battles that have become key events in new nationalist-populist interpretations of history, such as the “Miracle over the Vistula,” the “Battle of Grunwald,” and the “Warsaw Uprising,” and he symbolically elevates the heroism and martyrdom of the Polish people. Because of this focus on popularized historical events, Jakub Różalski became famous among Polish patriotic circles, and in recent years, he has collaborated with Red is Bad in transforming his artistic vision of history into Polish patriotic fashion. His paintings depicting these battles were turned into prints and appeared in the series of historical T-shirts produced by the store.
One of the most striking garments from this collaboration is a sweatshirt reproducing Różalski’s scene of an armored confrontation, in which a massive, steel-clad figure towers over a smaller medieval knight draped in a red cloak bearing the Polish white eagle. In Barthesian terms, the monumental scale, gleaming armor, mist-filled battlefield, and heraldic emblem act as signifiers; the signifieds include the drama of historical survival, the menace of external threat, and the ideal of a heroic national mission. Together they form a sign in which the Polish defender appears at once fragile and indomitable, creating a compact visual narrative of martyrdom and courage that echoes the “Miracle on the Vistula” and other founding moments of Polish national mythology. The stark contrast between the grey landscape and the flash of red on the hero’s cloak turns the wearer’s body into a moving patriotic banner. Seen through a discourse-analytic lens, three levels emerge. In production, the design originates in a hybrid universe of steampunk fantasy and Polish historical memory and is intentionally licensed to Red is Bad, a brand devoted to patriotic streetwear. In the text itself, global fantasy tropes with oversized mechanical warriors and dystopian atmospheres, merge with Polish symbols to create a “glocal” form of sartorial nationalism. In reception, the sweatshirt circulates simultaneously in local patriotic networks and global gaming and fashion markets, allowing it to be read as national heroism by Polish audiences, as an alternative-history aesthetic by international gamers, and as a striking commodity by global consumers. This multilayered trajectory exemplifies how patriotic fashion today works not only as memory politics but also as a transnational product, carrying Polish historical narratives into the wider pop-cultural economy. The militarized typography and palette of Red is Bad act as signifiers, while the signifieds include militancy, resistance, and uncompromising patriotism. Together, they produce a sign of embattled national identity, turning commercial streetwear into a vehicle for political affirmation. (Footnote, Barthes.)
At the same time, Różalski’s broader 1920+ universe also foregrounds gendered symbolism. Many compositions, including those adapted for Red is Bad apparel, pair armored male warriors with equally combative female fighters. These women are shown wielding weapons and facing danger, asserting physical agency within the battle scenes. Yet their representation remains highly stylized: bodies are accentuated and often accompanied by wild animals such as tigers, amplifying an aura of erotic wildness. In Barthesian terms, these images act as signifiers of strength and untamed energy and sexual power, but within a nationalist frame, they also reinscribe familiar gender codes, where men embody disciplined, state-like protection, while women embody a fierce, mythic vitality and fertility that is aestheticized. Even as warriors, the female figures help construct a vision of the nation where heroism is inseparable from spectacle and gendered ideals.Footnote 54
Another layer is added by the return of folklore and traditional Polish noble aesthetics into fashion and stage performance. While these elements were long associated with kitsch or peasant nostalgia, they have now been rebranded as symbols of cultural purity and national pride. Sarmatian aesthetics — typical of Polish noble identity in the early modern period — are promoted in exhibitions and official events. These styles are also visible in fashion, especially for women: long embroidered skirts, corset-like tops, braids, and flower crowns evoke a stylized national femininity. As Kristen Ghodsee shows, socialist women’s activism in the Eastern Bloc left behind a complex legacy of both emancipation and visual regulation, which influences post-Communist gender aesthetics.Footnote 55 While at first glance these seem apolitical, they are often framed as part of the broader conservative and religious moral code linked to Catholicism and traditional gender roles. Thus, cultural producers — musicians, costume designers, and influencers — play an active role in transmitting these aesthetics.
The sexualization of folk dress also echoes this mixture of old and new. Cleo and Donatan’s Eurovision performance in 2014 showed folk-inspired costumes transformed into an eroticized patriotic performance and sparked widespread public debate. Though the look was criticized abroad for exoticizing Eastern Europe, within Poland, it was largely supported by right-wing youth culture. The blend of folklore, eroticism, and national symbolism created a powerful visual spectacle that was emotionally resonant and easily shareable online. National femininity was stylized as sensual, traditional, and proud.
The official video for the song, titled My Słowianie /Slavic Girls, dramatizes these ideas even more explicitly than the Eurovision stage act. Set in an idealized rustic courtyard, it showed young women in short, brightly embroidered skirts, low-cut blouses, and red coral necklaces churning butter, hanging laundry, kneading dough, and milking cows with overtly sexual gestures and slow camera pans. Cleo herself alternated between a folk-inspired floral headdress and urban-street styling, rapping in front of a cottage decorated with painted wooden ornaments. The mise-en-scène fused the domestic and the performative: household labor becomes spectacle, and pastoral heritage becomes pop-video glamour.
In Barthesian terms, the embroidered skirts, red beads, churns of cream, and rhythmic gestures served as signifiers, while their signifieds included rural purity, fertility, and a confident erotic power. Brought together, these elements created a sign of national femininity that is simultaneously traditional and provocatively modern. The video’s camera work: long, lingering close-ups of décolletage and slow-motion shots of cream spilling or dough stretching, heightened the sensuality, turning domestic work into visual innuendo. Cleo’s dual costume underscored another layer of meaning: the Slavic woman as both keeper of tradition and cosmopolitan performer.
Viewed through discourse analysis, the case operates on three levels. The video was carefully staged to appeal to multiple audiences, marrying Polish folk motifs with global hip-hop aesthetics, and was designed for viral online circulation. It merged village décor, modern beats, and exaggerated gestures into a playful yet assertive narrative of cultural pride. While some Western commentators criticized the video as kitsch or sexist, Polish nationalist and right-wing youth audiences supported it as a stylish affirmation of Slavic identity. The divergent readings confirm that the performance functions as a contested sign within both domestic and international arenas.
This extended case shows that gender is not merely decorative in nationalist fashion and performance. Women appear as active agents, confidently sexual and self-aware, while at the same time serving as emblematic bodies through which the nation projects fertility, authenticity, and cultural strength to both internal and external viewers.Footnote 56
By contrast, women’s black clothing was once again politicized during the 2016 “Black Protests” against abortion laws.Footnote 57 Thousands of women dressed in black to signal bodily autonomy and political opposition.Footnote 58 The monochrome black garments of the Black Protests operate as the signifier; the signifieds include mourning, dissent, and solidarity. Following Barthes, the resulting sign transforms everyday dress into a visual grammar of resistance, where women’s bodies become collective surfaces, demonstrating gendered vulnerability and political defiance. The same black attire can also signify different things across contexts: for sympathizers, it represents solidarity and resistance, while for opponents, it may connote disruption or nihilism. This polysemy exemplifies Barthes’s insight that fashion signs rarely have a single fixed meaning but circulate within contested fields of discourse.Footnote 59
This cultivation of patriotic femininity complemented the militarized masculinity seen in other right-wing media. Men are portrayed as defenders of the homeland — strong, ready to fight, and loyal to the memory of Polish martyrdom. The return of military-style dress, such as trench coats, officer boots, and khaki accessories, is visible in patriotic collections and everyday wear. The idea of historical continuity is staged through the body: clothing becomes a medium for transmitting national memory, not only in institutional contexts but also in street fashion and public performances. The COVID-19 pandemic created new forms of sartorial nationalism: patriotic face masks, military colors, and Slavic symbols (for example, the Kolowrot) became popular. Webstores such as Red is Bad and Slavic Division marketed nationalist messages through everyday accessories.Footnote 60
So, the T-shirts produced by right-wing or patriotic fashion brands often depict scenes from the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 or images of fighting heroes and insurgents. Among the most commonly used symbols is the anchor of the Polish underground state (Polska Walcząca), as well as nationalist slogans such as “Death to the Enemies of the Homeland” or “God, Honor, Fatherland.” These items are widely worn by young people at patriotic concerts, football matches, or marches. Unlike in Russia, the Polish Catholic Church is less visibly involved in dictating dress codes. Such minor initiatives as “Wear a Dress for Maria,” done by the Church radio and activists, encountered massive public criticism.Footnote 61 Polish patriotic aesthetics avoid leader-centered iconography and instead focus on historical figures: King Jagiello, Józef Piłsudski, or Pope John Paul II, among others.Footnote 62
Yet the reference to the Warsaw Uprising is not limited to visual codes. There is a broader performance of martyrdom as part of nationalist identity. In public discourse, the figure of the insurgent, especially the young female nurse or soldier, is idealized and re-imagined in visual formats, including fashion. Emotional identification with the victim-hero is central here. As Michael Billig argued in Banal Nationalism, these daily embodied gestures he called “flagging” plays a significant role in reinforcing national identity through visual and emotional repetition.Footnote 63
In Poland, patriotic brands attract both devoted youth consumers and critical commentary. Some cultural critics warn of the militarization of everyday dress, while others parody nationalist aesthetics in memes or ironic fashion mash-ups. The Eurovision performance of Cleo and Donatan provoked debates between accusations of exoticizing Slavic femininity abroad and its embrace as authentic patriotism within Poland. Such contested receptions reveal the polysemy of nationalist fashion: the same symbols can embody pride, irony, or satire depending on context.
The new nationalist attire in Poland, therefore, reflects a complex interplay between common emotional identification, state-supported historical storytelling, and media-driven aesthetics. Its forms, whether military, folkloric, or symbolic, are based on recognizable patterns rooted in Polish history. What connects them is their function: to perform national belonging, to visually mourn and commemorate, and to express political identity through clothing. The national belonging thus becomes a stage on which the past is re-enacted, not as a neutral memory but as an ideological statement.
Conclusion
In the last decade, a new patriotic fashion has emerged in many parts of the world and most visibly in Eastern-Central Europe, combining the traditional nationalist ideology of the 19th century with the logic of late capitalist aesthetics and populist visual politics. This revival of patriotism in attire forms a key part of the wider new nationalist phenomenon. The article has aimed to contribute to the scholarly discussion on these new visual and ideological practices in the former Communist Bloc and to analyze them through the prism of historical continuities, semiotic meaning, and the role of elites in shaping ideological visualities. It has been demonstrated that nationalist dress is not simply a question of design or style, but rather a central means of communicating political belonging and visualizing national ideology.
The examples from Poland and Russia illustrate two different models of nationalist fashion. In Russia, patriotic fashion is closely tied to state policy, religious values, and imperial nostalgia. In Poland, it is more grounded in grassroots historical memory, romantic nationalism, and martyrdom. The symbolic language in both cases is formed not only through government channels but also by a broad range of actors: artists, religious figures, designers, museums, educators, and influencers, who actively reframe the past and create visually engaging codes of national identity. Both Russia and Poland display a variety of sartorial practices, from grassroots fashion to elite-led initiatives. Yet the balance differs: in Russia, state and church involvement make official ideological frameworks particularly central, whereas in Poland, nationalist fashion has flourished more in the commercial and grassroots spheres. Highlighting this contrast allows us to see how different political and cultural contexts shape the ideological work of clothing.
Despite their differences, these cases both demonstrate the emotional and performative nature of nationalist dress. Wearing such clothes often implies not only agreement with political narratives but also a sense of participation in a larger national story. The clothes function as both personal expressions and political symbols, allowing individuals to locate themselves within a broader ideological map. This link between fashion, identity, and political affiliation is a powerful one, particularly when it is tied to memory, sacrifice, and the claim to authenticity.
The resurgence of patriotic dress is closely tied to the contemporary context of political instability, war, migration, and globalization. In both countries, nationalist actors use fashion to offer an emotionally resonant alternative to what they perceive as alienating or threatening global ideologies. In doing so, they often evoke the 19th-century roots of nationalism, drawing on familiar motifs of folklore, religious belonging, gender roles, and historical trauma. At the same time, the forms through which these aesthetics are distributed, such as Instagram, online shops, and digital media, demonstrate how contemporary new nationalism operates through a hybrid of past and present strategies.
Gendered imaginaries are central to both cases. In Russia, Orthodox modesty codes and maternal ideals define female dress, while hypermasculine Putin imagery and military chic dominate male attire. In Poland, female bodies are cast as symbols of mourning and martyrdom (from nineteenth-century black fashion to the 2016 Black Protests) but also eroticized in folkloric costumes such as the 2014 Eurovision performance. Male bodies, by contrast, are visualized through soldierly sacrifice and resistance. These gendered scripts show how nationalist fashion naturalizes binary ideals of nationhood through the embodied performances of women as guardians and men as warriors. Thus, in both cases, female bodies are often cast as carriers of morality and national continuity, whether through modesty, martyrdom, or eroticized folklore. Male bodies, by contrast, are visualized through hypermasculine military strength. These gendered aesthetics are not neutral but function as ideological scripts, organizing the nationalist imaginary through visual performance.
Ultimately, new nationalist attire in Russia and Poland functions as both expression and tool embodying political ideology while shaping the conditions for its transmission. Dress, in this sense, becomes more than fashion: it becomes a site where the past is worn, the present is performed, and the nation is made visible. The revival of 19th-century aesthetics, alongside the selective use of Soviet visual legacies, reveals the extent to which contemporary nationalist dress is embedded in longer historical processes. Rather than representing a break from the past, these fashion codes reactivate existing repertoires as symbols of national strength, femininity, sacrifice, and unity that have long circulated in Central and Eastern European political cultures. The shift from uniform state dress under Communism to diversified ideological self-presentation today also marks the changing relationship between fashion, power, and identity.
Bringing the Russian and Polish cases together, the semiotic analyses demonstrate how patriotic and nationalist fashion operates through similar mechanisms of signification: garments and accessories, which become signifiers with ideological meanings of tradition, gender, authority, and resistance. These contexts diverge: in Russia, the most ideologically salient signs are produced and legitimized through state and church institutions, while in Poland, they emerge more through grassroots, commercial, and protest-driven initiatives.
Finally, this article suggested that the visual and material performance of nationalism deserves more scholarly attention, particularly in the context of post-Communist societies, where national identity remains contested and in flux. Nationalist dress serves not only to revive or reproduce existing ideologies, but to reshape them: to make them wearable, desirable, and emotionally engaging. In this way, fashion becomes a tool of symbolic power, through which the boundaries of the nation are visually drawn, emotionally inhabited, and politically claimed.
Financial support
This publication is funded by the BMBF.
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