And, as Boćkowska reminds us, it was not just the clothes. The collection was designed for the State Clothing Factory, the Cora Clothing Industry Plant in Warsaw. The whole was directed by Wowo Bielicki, Hase’s partner, who was also connected to Bim-Bom in Gdańsk. Models who resembled Anna Karenina as well as soldiers of the Red Army paraded down the catwalk to the rhythm of the Beatles’ hits. Teresa Kuczyńska, a journalist who wrote for the Ty i ja lifestyle magazine commented 'We welcome a new designer, full of energy, imagination, and very determined'.
In the following decades, Hase's original collections were presented and enthusiastically received in Paris, Tokyo, New York, Berlin, Vienna, Milan, Moscow, and Prague.
Barbara Hoff the dictator
A legend. Number 1 on the list of the most beautiful girls in the country, according to Leopold Tyrmand. The author of an iconic fashion column in the Przekrój magazine, as well as hundreds of different tricks instantly taken up on the streets. A specialist in creative remakes, she taught how to make a skirt out of a pair of trousers, how to turn trainers into trendy pumps, and how to make elegant evening blouses from sporty T-shirts. She also gave hints on how to obtain fabric for trousers:
You do it like this: you buy a tie (there are ties available). You give it to grandpa. From grandpa, you coax an old pair of trousers. They are a bit destroyed, but they are made from good wool (…).
She designed her first dress when she was 4 years old, and her first corduroy dress collection in 1967. One had to order them quite a while in advance, because as soon as they appeared in stores, the place filled up and products disappeared even from off the mannequins. Hoffman soon opened a stand of her own in the Junior shopping mall – Hoffland. And once again, there were huge queues. Boćkowska, who tried on numerous occasions to get her heroine to speak about fashion, explains her success in the following way:
The principle was simple. Any possible fabric, even the kinds that seemed unfashionable, but always with a great cut and a great idea. Corduroy dresses once again. A dark red one with big blue pockets and a wide collar, a pink one with blue rope and a stand-up collar, a blue one with beige elements and the hit-model called Mariola: yellow, with a navy vertical stripe, buttons under the neck and pockets, also sewn onto the sleeves.