Resumen de Costumes in Context: Masquerade in the Russian Silver Age
This is a positive review of The Modernist Masquerade: Stylizing Life, Literature and Costumes in Russia by Colleen McQuillen. In the book the author supplies a history of masquerade in Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries, but the focus of the book is on the period called the Silver Age, from the end of the nineteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth. The author claims that costuming is at the center of the amazing cultural production of the Silver Age, and it is hard to argue with her. She finds costuming in Symbolist and Futurist poetry as well as works by Andreev and Akhmatova. Costuming was also central to the pre-revolutionary political activity of this period. The book has many surprises, and the reader will find masquerade permeating most aspects of Russian culture.
