Although the weight and position of the Hungarian working class often underwent radical transformation in the course of the twentieth century, its determinant role in changes of modern society in this period is unquestionable. The main aim of this study is to give a comprehensive review of how Hungarian historiography and socio-historical scholarship presented this social group in the decades before and after the end of the Socialist regime. In addition to the literature review and historiography of the question, the study also undertakes the summary of ‘workers’ concepts in present-day social sciences.

Nincs absztrakt.

The study gives a survey of important characteristics of the history of Hungarian city fashion and clothing from the end of the nineteen sixties to the mid-eighties, by concentrating on the transformations of clothing, the strengthening of consumer mentality and the gradually improving market-orientation of the institutional system. The study shows that the period under analysis was dominated by two tendencies: on the one hand by simpler clothing, due to the shift in the behavioural standards concerning clothing, on the other by versatility of fashion, in adoption of fashion traits, and in the quality of dress worn. Clothing was a suitable tool to demonstrate life quality, so members of the society of the late Kádár-era, who have acquired consumption habits, strove to express that they lived at least among the circumstances that met the social average.