Off the wall

East Germany may be most remembered for the activities of the Stasi, but now, for the first time, its secret short flirtation with fashion is revealed. For a short period the notoriously repressive bureaucrats who ran East Germany decided to bring some color into their otherwise drab lives. They commissioned two photographers, hired St. Pauli Girls as models, and chose the locations that represented their greatest socialist achievements—oil refineries, worker canteens, concrete office buildings, airports—to shoot their daring photographs. The result: cunning and original uses for tartan, little hats and jaunty caps, bold florals, and more swatches of pumpkin, tomato, and lemon yellow than you might find at a country fair. For years, these alarming examples of a zeitgeist unleashed have been hidden from Western eyes…but not anymore From blindingly-bright mod go-go girls to demure peasant lasses posed with that most German of animals, the Llama, these images reveal another side of what went on behind the Berlin Wall.