I had a boundless imagination, so I could imagine many things. I learned through trial and error, and also trying out different sewing patterns from Burda Style magazine – which was another method of trial and error. Some things worked, some didn’t. I got angry, because I didn’t know certain rules, that one line doesn’t always have to match the other, but these were tailoring tricks I didn’t know about, so I would get angry that the patterns were wrong.
After high school, I got into the Academy of Fine Arts, and, at the same time, worked as a costume designer for the theatre and film industries. At the beginning of the 1990s, in my second or third year of university, I worked with a British production company. They filmed Frankenstein: The True Story here in Poland. The film was full of stars, Oscar winners. It was a giant British production. I worked as a costumer’s assistant. On the last night, after the wrap party, I thought to myself: ‘Gosh, I have money, I had to communicate with the British crew without speaking English, so I’ll go out to London for three months to a language school and learn English’. I was on dean’s leave at the time. So I left. And that was really a time when nobody went abroad. And I didn’t really know what London was, I didn’t know anyone there. I just took a shot in the dark. I went by bus, because I couldn’t afford the plane. I didn’t know what stop to get off at, I didn’t know anything.
The first weeks were complicated, but the trip taught me a lot, made me tougher. Through a miracle I found the language school, attended by mostly Brazilians, a few Poles, one Italian, one Irishman. A few Polish women worked there. They knew I could sew and they brought me an advertisement seeking someone with sewing abilities. I was already out of money and had nothing to live off of. So I ended up at a small workshop run by a Polish woman, where British designers sewed small collections, just a few pieces of each. They were sold at places like Harrods or Liberty. I learned a lot there, although it was very hard work, I earned little and worked a lot – seven days a week. In that same workshop Alexander McQueen – still as a student, most likely – sewed one of his first jackets, although we missed each other.