BAKU'S FASHIONISTAS

What was "Coke"? What did the "jacketok" look like? How did "shoes that speak for themselves" differ from "platform shoes"? What kind of tie did our grandfathers call "fire in the jungles"? Where was "Broadway" and what did Nizami have to do with this?

The costs of shortage

Yes, all this is about fashionistas, people who the relevant clause in the Criminal Code of the time referred to as people "worshipping the West". In actual fact, they just listened to good music, danced and wore what they thought were stylish clothes. Today they might be called non-conformists and, you see, it was precisely from these fashionistas that a whole generation of Soviet and post-Soviet intelligentsia has grown up. And here in Baku there is something to boast about.

The fact is that Baku could boast the most fashionistas after Moscow and Leningrad [now St. Petersburg]. And there were good reasons for that. Firstly, Baku was a sunny tourist city, a real resort, and, unlike the other two capital cities, its warm climate allowed people to spend more time wandering round the city in their stylish outfits. Secondly, an enormous number of foreign students were studying here, who brought with them not only foreign fashions, but also records on which neither songs about a blue headscarf or about the victory of communism could be heard.

The fashionistas' separate kind of culture could be referred to as autochthonous for the Soviet Union. There was nothing like it anywhere else in the world. The lack of good-quality clothing (the textiles produced in the Soviet Union were unbelievably inferior and uninteresting), plus there was a shortage of good music for young people to listen to. Besides this, as everyone knows the forbidden fruit is always the most desired one. For the fashionistas jazz was what was most desirable.

The fashionistas appeared in Moscow simultaneously almost immediately after the Second World War. It all started with the student parties which were held quite legally at the AZI [Azerbaijani Engineering Institute], later reorganised as the Azerbaijani Industrial Institute (AzII). 

Naturally, in those days there was not such an abundance of clubs and entertainment venues. The young people and poverty-stricken students could not afford to go to restaurants," former fashionista Rafiq Mammadov recounts. "Therefore parties were arranged at the establishments of higher education, or as they were ceremonially called, soirees. But even these civilised get-togethers could be the target of the stern members of the voluntary people's patrols, if the latter discovered that the twist and rock'n roll were being played instead of the permitted waltz. Those who were caught during police raids, he recalls, could easily find themselves "in klink" for 15 days.  

Today it seems to us that we have a good time, nowadays there are plenty of parties in clubs and places to enjoy oneself. But, to be frank about it, our fathers and grandfathers enjoyed themselves as much as we, the Internet and social networking generation, do. Thus, for example on average a 1,000 people would come to the dances at the AZI which lasted from 2100 hours until morning. Entrance was free for students, but visitors had to pay 10 roubles. In order to reduce the numbers of people wishing to come, the tickets began to be sold for 50 roubles, but even that did not help. Those without tickets used to stand by the entrance that comes out onto Azadliq Avenue and wait for the ushers to get tired and go home. The most persistent would shin up the metal drain pipes to the first floor. An important element of the evening was the fashionistas' outfits. They would bring them carefully folded in a bag so that they did not get wet and would get changed there on the spot.

The podium, "Broadway", Torgovaya Street, Nizami Street

In the 1960s and 1970s drain-pipe trousers, single-breasted and then double-breasted check jackets fitted at the waist and bright-coloured nylon shirts were a must for the fashionista," Rafiq Mammadov said. "In footwear winkle-picker, pointed-toe shoes made of suede to order were in fashion." In general suits were made to measure. Fabric samples were hung up outside the workshop so that you could choose the one you liked right there on the spot. "A tailored suit cost 35-40 roubles."

One of the well-known workshops was located next to the ninth department of the post-office (in Besmartaba area), another well-known tailor's workshop was next to the chemist's on one of the streets adjacent to Fountains' Square. Good fabrics could also be obtained from under the counter at the department stores in towns and cities," the "fashionista" recalls.

The fashionistas' outfits were not only for going out in the city, but more often than not for one thing, meetings on "Broadway". Broadway or "Brod" existed in many major towns in the Union. In Moscow it was Gorky Street (now Tverskaya) and in St. Petersburg Nevskiy Prospekt. In Baku, Torgovaya, i.e. Nizami Street, was naturally referred to as Broadway. 

For the fashionistas the meeting on Torgovaya was something like a cult action. In their language it was called "having a fling on Brod". Then the fashionista would dress in everything he had. He would wear a bright-coloured (best of all green or red fine check) jacketok [jacket] with trousers of a matching colour (or on the contrary of striking contrast colours) and a very loud tie-yok [tie], standing out from the overall style. It is not difficult to guess that the names of the trappings of fashion in their clothing were borrowed from English.

 An important element, not only of the outfit, but also of the long-awaited meeting on Broadway was the shoozy (shoes), which were even rather like a part of the encounter. If the fashionista was wearing "shoes with turned-up toes" (shoes with long, pointed and raised toes), when he met the person he was supposed to stamp his feet, standing on his toes. And then there were "platform shoes" (with high soles), on which he was supposed to mince back and forth as if doing a kind of tap-dance. To the passers-by that sometimes looked ridiculous so they would click their tongues, made heckling remarks and walk on.

Naturally it was difficult to get hold of all these luxuries. "Often the 'sales outlets' were in people's flats. The dealers delivered their goods after spending many hours standing in many-kilometre-long queues outside Moscow's GUM and TsUM department stores and the shops selling Polish wares," a former fashionista recalls. A pair of Yugoslavian shoes purchased for 45 roubles could easily be resold in Baku for 90 roubles, and, if there was a high demand, for even as much as 150 roubles." He said that it was also the height of fashion to put brilliantine on your hair to make it glossy and well coiffured.

Soviet folklore boasted a whole series of little tales about the fashionistas and their way of life, the most well-known of which was "you play jazz today and sell your motherland tomorrow". And jazz really was something special, something sacred uniting the people of that generation.

We come from jazz

Records were the pride and joy of any fashionista. Not only were folk songs replaced by Mozart and small-town stars of the socialist camp (sometimes pirated melodies from outside the Soviet Union and always imitating the more professional original performance), but the fashionistas had records of Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. The cost of the records, depending on the quality, varied from 100 to 500 roubles (in 1961 money), which was equal to half a month's wages for an engineer. The records could be purchased from dealers.

It was illegal to do this during the times of the planned economy, and therefore the "dealers" charged large amounts of money. There were three main places where record dealing was taking place. First of all, there was Kubinka [area where the "dealers" worked] of course, where the single-storey houses, higgledy-piggledy blocks and walls that could easily be jumped over provided for a quick getaway. There were two other districts which also stood out for a similar labyrinth-like architecture and were therefore favoured by the dealers - these were  "Ermanikand" which was mainly inhabited by Armenians and "Sovietskaya".

"Dealers also used to stand in the parks. For example, record sellers used to be in the park a bit higher up than the Zorge monument," the jazz lover and collector Huseyn Quliyev recounts. "In 1968 you could buy any records of the best jazz for 10 roubles." The record sellers did not have the records with them. They would meet customers and agree a price with them and then they would show the goods, foreign-produced 45s, in the courtyard of their home. It was not just a matter of the quality of the music, but of the records themselves, the sound on which was much better than that on the records produced by "Melodiya", the sole Soviet record-producer.

In Baku they did not jam the jazz programmes very much, so it was possible to listen to good music at other times besides midnight. To do this, people bought radiograms which were record-players with multi-frequency receivers. It was considered a great luxury to get a radiola made by the [Latvian] "Daugava" factory in Riga," says Quliyev. I had one with big "Radiotekhnika" speakers. It cost me 900 roubles, so it took me a year to pay back the loan I took from the "Shmidt" factory where I worked for 150-roubles per month."

At night the music-loving fashionistas would listen to jazz. "At midnight the [Voice of America] "Jazz Hour was broadcast," Quliyev tells us. "Before that, light variety music would be played and then from 15 minutes past midnight, they would put on the so-called pioneers of jazz, Coltrane, Parker and others for 45 minutes. It was not until 1 o'clock in the morning that the broadcast ended and then we would go to sleep and to work in the morning."

The culture of the music-loving fashionistas was a kind of phenomenon of the times engendered by the shortages and the lack of access to what was splendid. It did not leave anything in its wake except old photographs, the magnificent school of Baku jazz and naturally the memories, but even that is still quite a lot.