The Cosmopolitan Imagination in the Cold War Context: Finnish Fashion Models and National Fantasies of International Success

Abstract

This article explores fashion modeling as an area of interest to the national media. While much research has been done on modeling within fashion theory, my focus is on the role of models in national self-definition, and on the national fantasies and ideals of “making it” internationally that were attached to young women working abroad as models in the 1960s. I address these ideals in the historical context of the postwar modernization process and the geopolitical position of Finland as a neutral territory between the East and the West during the Cold War period. This article extends the existing theorizations on modeling by investigating the notion of cosmopolitanism as a structure of feeling.The research material consists of a collection of interviews published in the Finnish women's magazine Anna between 1963 and 1973.

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