10 Iconic Polish Fabrics
Poland was never considered a fashion powerhouse – especially compared to France or Italy, where textile industry has flourished for centuries. But then again, fabric and cloth were and still are important parts of Polish material culture: they are the carrier and the blank page for traditions, trends, social moods and changes, as well as artistic creations.
Here are some of the most notable and eye-catching textiles that can be found both on Polish streets and in museums.
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Ethnic Lowicki pattern, photo: from the archive of Zenon Zyburtowicz / East News
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Americans have stars and stripes, while Polish has stripes and… stripes. The famous pattern comes from Łowicz, a small town in the Mazowsze region, and was part of traditional garments worn as early as in the 1820s. The fabric combines vertical stripes interlaced with floral patterns and was most commonly used for female skirts. The colors of the stripes, also known as ‘belts’, have changed throughout the decades. According to Elżbieta Miszczyńska, who is an expert in ethnic art, initially the stipes were woven on a dark red backdrop and supplemented by thin, black-and-white lines. Later on, green, yellow, navy blue and crimson-colored stripes joined the mix, while during the Interwar period (1918-1939), the most common hues were cold shades of blue and green.
The Łowicki pattern is not just stripes though, but also a colorful mix of roses and wildflowers that have usually featured on shirts, scarfs and all sorts of embroidery. Now it can be found on mugs, pencils and notebooks in many Polish souvenir shops, even outside the Mazowsze region. That style is only a thing of the past, though – Joanna Klimas, one of the most popular contemporary designers, has reworked the Łowicki pattern in her AW 2010/2011 collection, adding stripes and colors to her trademark minimalistic clothes. ‘I think that fashion can aid preserving our tradition’, she says.
2. ‘Pikasy’: Dior & Picasso à la Polonaise
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Summer dress by Barbara Hoff, designed by Barbara Hoff, Warsaw Food Cooperative, Overlay Work Establishment, 1982, photo: Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź
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In the second half of the 1950s, the Polish totalitarian regime loosened its grip on the country and its citizens. It also meant more freedom for the artists, as social realism was dropped as the official aesthetic. Designers could express their ideas is in more modern and less literal way, which lead to forming something called the ‘Polish New Look’. The name alluded to a famous 1947 Christian Dior collection which marked the return of thr hourglass silhouette in women’s fashion, as well as re-introduced textile with small patterns.
The feminine shaped influenced the look of ceramic products like vases, and to some extent fabrics. However, the textile designers of the Polish New Look preferred abstract patterns that played with concept of human and animal shapes and forms. That particular style of product design was also called pikasy, after the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso. Another important name has to be dropped here: Wanda Telakowska, who founded Warsaw's Institute of Industrial Design in 1950 and promoted the Polish New Look, as well as other styles that would make life more beautiful in Poland.
3. Polish denim: Arizona dreaming
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Youth wearing jeans in front of the Warsaw Center Department Stores, photo / Jan Morek / PAP
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In communist Poland denim trousers were not easy to buy, either because they were difficult to find, or because they were expensive or available in Pewex shops, which only accepted payment in US dollars. But Polish people are smart and resourceful, so soon a local equivalent of the cult garment was developed – the Odra factory, built in 1962 in Szczecin, began sewing pants from cotton fabric called ‘Arizona’. They were huge hit on the local market, but also in the USSR. According to an official data, Soviets were ordering up to 200,000 pairs a year.
Polish jeans had many cute nicknames – ‘odrzaki’, ‘szariki’ (after a Szarik, a canine protagonist from Polish cult TV series Four Tank-Men and a Dog) and ‘teksasy’. The latter came from the name of another textile factory sewing pants – Texpol, which was based in Łódź.
4. Abakans: not just a pretty fabric
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'Red Abakan' by Magdalena Abakanowicz, 1969, photo: EFE / MG / Forum
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And now for something completely different: fibre works named Abakans after their inventor Magdalena Abakanowicz. They’re one-of-a-kind, sizeable sculptures made of fabric prepared by the artist herself. Abakanowicz would often recycle sisal ropes or used wool, horsehair and even hemp to create a material for her works of art. Her mission was to wipe out the ‘utilitarian function of tapestry’, as she said back in the 1960s, when her fibre works first came to being. Abakans often hang from ceiling, dominating the entire room with their forceful presence. They can be found in many museums and private collections across the world, with one Abakan being famously owned by the late actor Robin Williams.
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'Panny' (Ladies) decorative fabric by Alicja Wyszogrodzka, 1958, photo: Korta Micha / National Museum in Warsaw
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Probably everyone has heard of a ‘diaper bag’, which incidentally is not made from used diapers, but for the purpose of carrying them. This explanation, sounding like a bad joke, is a necessary one – in communist Poland reusable, cloth diapers made from a type of cotton called ‘tetra’ was a fashion fabric too. Originally off-white, the diaper fabric would be dyed with some sort of a paint or even… a strong tea, and then morphed into a skirt, T-shirt or a scarf.
Being fashionable at that time in Poland meant being resourceful and ingenious. Other home textiles that turned into clothes were curtains and drapes (hello, Scarlett O’Hara!), and in the late 1940s, even fabric from military parachutes was used to dress Poles.
6. Flower prints: 100% pretty
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Carnival fashion, "Dana" Clothing Industry Plant, Szczecin, photo: Janusz Sobolewski / Forum
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Scarf, 1970s, Telimena Fashion House, photo: Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź
Contrary to the popular opinions, the years Poland was under the communist regime weren’t a ‘grey era’ (that will come later), in a literal sense. Many talented artists and designers worked hard to infuse the streets and Polish wardrobes with colours. One of them was the famous fashion designer Barbara Hoff, who created the Hoffland brand, the other and much less known was Anna Brokowska, who graduated from Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź in the 1950s. She created many amazing floral patterns, that were later used by different clothing factories and designers for women’s dresses, skirts and other garments.
7. Władysław Strzemiński’s afterimage & prints
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Presentation of a cloth fabric design by Władysław Strzemiński at the Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź, photo: Grzegorz Michałowski / PAP
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The patron of the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź, avant-garde painter and scholar Władysław Strzemiński worked with both canvas and textile. In his art he also explored the nature and mechanics of human vision, which resulted in many unique works. In 1948 and 1949 he created a series of paintings which he called Solar Afterimage, which documented the visual sensation of staring at the sun. Strzemiński also made a dress fabric using the same pattern, but there is no information about any Polish fashion designer using it to make an actual garment. It’s a shame, because such a design could be a Polish match for Yves Saint Laurent’s Mondrian Dress.
8. Arkadius: (un)holy textiles
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New Year's Eve fashion show by Arkadius, 2002, Warsaw, photo: Norbert Urbaniak / Forum, Piotr Fote / Reporter / East News
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Some fashion designers thrive on shock value and scandal. In the early 2000s, Poland’s Arkadius (Arkadiusz Weremczuk), a famous Central Saint Martin’s alumnus, joined the ranks of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano after he presented collections that were both eye-catching and also pin-pointed Polish national flaws, insecurities and more. In his SS 2001 collection Paulina, he used actual hay as a part of his designs to argue that many Poles are ashamed of their peasant heritage. In the following year he presented Virgin Mary Wears the Trousers, where he used religious images and symbols on the textile – in Catholic Poland, it was considered more of a profanity than an intellectual provocation. Working with provocative prints and fabrics became Arkadius’s trademark.
After Arkadius opened his flagship store in Warsaw, he closed just it few years later, announcing the ‘death’ of his brand by designing dresses with obituary prints under a new company’s name. Not long after that, he quit the fashion industry and Poland all together and moved to Brazil.
Polish connections to international high fashion can be found not only amongst supermodels like Anja Rubik and Małgosia Bela, but also painters and graphic designers. Jan Bajtlik, a Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts graduate, became talk of the town when he started a collaboration with luxury brand Hermès.
His most notable work for the Paris-based company is designing colorful pattern for Hermès’s carré – a famous square shaped scarf. That particular design is called ‘animapolis’ for its amazing mix of animal and urban patterns, including the silhouette of Warsaw’s landmark: the Palace of Science and Culture, and Bajtlik’s dog Kluska. The Polish capital city, once called the ‘Paris of the North’, landed in France in great style.
Bajtlik has designed a few more items for Hermès – wallets, towels – and even their store windows. His others works include posters, books and the Paysage Polonaise (Polish Countryside) sneakers designed for the Bensimon brand and inspired by the Łowicz pattern mentioned above.
10. Grey area: a modern Polish urban trend
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Clothes from the Risk Made in Warsaw collection, photo: https://www.riskmadeinwarsaw.com
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Fashion is a bit like the weather: it can make a surprise shift for no apparent reason. In the 2010s, when capitalism in Poland was thriving and the economy was steadily growing, the streets of Warsaw lost a lot of its colour, quite literally. The most notable urban trend was grey jersey dresses, pants, shirts and scarfs – comfortable, yet hiding the curves of both men and women.
Michał Zaczyński, in his album Reason and Flair: A Century in Polish Fashion, released by Adam Mickiewicz Institute and Osnova Publishing House, mentions that grey jersey was popularized by Warsaw-based brand Risk and raised the brows of foreign fashion critics, who expected more diverse tints in the flourishing Poland. The fashion journalist Anna Konieczyńska observed in Gazeta.pl: ‘On the weekends in the playground the young parents look like an army of clones, are afraid of one thing: colour’.
There might be a practical explanation behind grey jersey’s huge success: it’s not an expensive textile and it’s easy to work with, even for up-and-coming fashion designers, whose ateliers are in their homes.
Written by Ola Salwa, 1 Jun 2021
