This paper explores the dynamics of women’s fashion marketing in advertisements and promotional materials related to Western ideas, materials or products. It will analyse published promotional visual and written texts in the interwar Bucharest press, with local or national distribution. The aim is to ascertain the degree and nature of Western women’s fashion influence on interwar Romania’s bourgeoisie. This will be interpreted as a reflection of larger social, political, cultural, artistic and economic phenomena at a local, regional, national, European and global level. This paper will also offer an overview of the various individuals and entities involved in the interwar Bucharest textile and fashion industry. These companies, creators and merchants represented various budgets and means of propagation and possible ethical and accuracy concerns regarding their messaging. It will follow the major streams in interwar Romanian advertising in relation to the West, namely on the circulation and promotion of ideas, raw materials and finished goods relevant to women’s fashion. It will employ semiotics and discourse analysis for a wider understanding of interwar Romania through the lens of fashion as marketed to interwar Bucharesters, covering all aspects relevant to the fashion industry, from conception, production and dissemination to consumption, interpretation and reinvention.
Keywords: women’s fashion; marketing; advertising; Bucharest; interwar