Polish Fashion is Folk, Rude, Political, Rebellious: An Interview with Karolina Sulej

rad_duet_123.jpg, default, 'Faience' sweatshirt, 'Polish patterns' dress, 'Faience' pants by Rad Duet, photo: RAD Duet, radduet

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As part of the cultural programme of the Polish Presidency of the EU Council, one standout highlight, a slightly unexpected one, will be ‘East Bound’, a showcase of Polish fashion. On 12th May 2025, at the Track venue in Brussels, works by the country’s most interesting contemporary designers will be in the spotlight, revealing just how diverse Polish fashion is today.

Curious about what to expect, we talk to the show’s curator, Karolina Sulej – a writer, journalist and podcaster known for her many years in fashion, and, since the invasion of Ukraine, for her humanitarian work as the co-founder of the Kraina Foundation.

Przemysław Gulda: How did you select the designers for this show?

Karolina Sulej: I wanted to show the spectrum of what’s happening in Polish fashion today, both in the area of streetwear and in the departments of more elite fashion. I have the impression that it’s only recently that the general public has realised fashion in Poland isn’t just a few household names, the ones that have appeared in women’s magazines and society columns for years.

I wanted to show the range of our technical capabilities, originality, creativity and sensitivity. To reveal our historical background and the rebellion against imposed authority, the spirit of entrepreneurship, our famous proverbial uhlan fancy, but also common sense inherited from generations of poverty, our respect for work and objects, and our natural reflex not to waste.

I wanted to show Polish fashion as a matrix of what responsible fashion in the 21st century can look like: designers who work without complexes, who aren’t interested in ‘catching up’ with anyone in the West. They haven’t invented Polish versions of Western brands, but have invented themselves, precisely thanks to the cultural background gained here in Poland, or – more broadly – in the former Second Polish Republic [which included regions east of Poland’s territory today – ed.].

Jerzy Antkowiak, 1975, surrounded by models wearing Moda polska projects, photo: Tadeusz Rolke/AW

That’s an interesting formula. But why do that?

Because in my opinion, the history of Polish fashion, in the modern sense of the word, started being written when Poland regained independence [in 1918], and to this day it has always been created together with Belarusians and Ukrainians, people who are culturally and ethnically related to us. In particular, after the outbreak of the full-scale war in Ukraine, Poland gained new citizens who also created fashion, who also became part of the industry – that’s why it was important for me to show the landscape of Polish fashion in its diversity, in its multi-dimensionality.

How many of these dimensions are there?

Fortunately, we’re no longer a homogeneous country, and our fashion isn’t like that either. There is no singular Polish fashion, there are Polish fashions. Depending on the designer’s place of origin, their identity, gender or the locality they are talking about, it’s a different Poland that’s on show. And I wanted to present as many of these Polands as possible. That’s why the show includes brands using the traditions of Podhale and Podlasie, as well as people from Poznań, Warsaw, Łódź and Kraków.

I also wanted to show the 30-year span of our independence after the political transformation – the show begins with clothes by Moda Polska designed by Jerzy Antkowiak, but they’re styled with new designs by Julia Kromolicka, the granddaughter of that legendary designer. Today, she’s at the beginning of her journey, building a brand based on plant-based fabric dyeing and recycling.

A picture from the exhibition 'Jerzy Antkowiak and Moda Polska', Central Museum of Textiles, Łódź, 2018, photo: Radosław Nawrocki/Forum

Jerzy Antkowiak's Bucking the Tide of Fashion - Image Gallery

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What else have you fitted into this broad view?

Between Moda Polska, which now qualifies for museum archives, and the responsible, innovative fashion of the youngest designers, such as Julia or Katja, who came from Belarus, there’s room for the classic tailoring of Tomek Ossoliński, the haute couture of Gosia Baczyńska and the RAD duo, Orska’s craftsmanship-inspired designs, fashion based on art by Joanna Hawrot, and streetwear brands such as Pat Guzik and Dreamland Syndicate. The latter also sells books, cassettes and vinyl records. But there’s also room for critical art that makes use of fashion – an important trend in Polish visual arts today – which is being represented at the show by Tanya May, a Belarusian artist. Her work – a show piece, a sculpture in motion – will close the show.

Joanna Hawrot, "Wereable Art – Unseen Threads", Daimaru Shinsaibashi, photo: Zuza Krajewska

What are your assumptions regarding the message this show is meant to convey?

The most important thing for me was to make both European and Polish audiences, especially those connected with Polish statehood and culture, aware of how important it is to put the state umbrella over fashion: a system of grants, subsidies, incubation programmes, promotions, even political lobbying. Polish fashion is a heritage, a resource, an export commodity, just like Polish design. It needs our attention, substantive assessments, experts and institutes. We’ve been waiting for this for years, during times when fashion was treated at best as a promising field of production, but never as a source of history or art. It should be treated as a brand, a mark of Poland’s quality in the region, one of our distinguishing features.

Dresses from the 'Wear Longer' collection, inspired by the '70s and Studio 54's energy, project by Tomasz Ossoliński, photo: the designer's website

Why is it worth talking about?

I wanted to show that what we have is an interesting resource, something inspiring for other countries that is deserving of attention, financial resources and popularisation. It’s also important to me that this is the first, but not the last, such undertaking. That this is just the beginning for initiatives that want to present Polish fashion – both abroad and in the country itself. I’m also very happy that we managed to gather many designers together, that this is a collective event. Polish fashion is dispersed, these designers aren’t in contact, do not support one another, do not care about the interests of the group or about ‘not walking alone’, because they’ve become so accustomed to the fact that they only have to care about themselves in order to survive.

But it’s time to get out of survival mode, get into conversations, brainstorming, networking, development. Maybe then we’ll be able to keep young, talented designers in the country. Because at the moment they often don’t want to stay here: in a country without any ideas for this industry, without developed programmes for young businesses, without fashion university degrees, without support from the state.

What do you want to show with this set?

The scope of our industry, its diversity, originality and the amount of work we’ve done over these past decades. Work that has so far remained unnoticed or simply been stereotyped. This is just a fragment of the scene, the beginning of the story. I’d like to prove through this show and its supplementing showroom that it’s worth taking an interest in each designer individually, and in our country, that it’s an interesting area on the map that deserves to be explored, analysed and experienced. This is a bit like a business card, a trailer, a moving exhibition, an introduction to Polish fashion that avoids mental shortcuts, clichés and prejudices.

What do Polish designers use as their references today?

All sorts. From their local context – the cities or regions where they come from and where they grew up, to the heritage of the Polish People’s Republic, to the folk traditions of this region of Europe. From rebellion against the mainstream like punk, feminism, queerness, to the world of visual arts and critical art, or to the ethical responsibility of fashion.

Do they draw their patterns from Polish tradition or from abroad?

Polish fashion – after years of having its eyes fixed on patterns from Western fashion weeks and magazines – has a distinct, independent language that wants to tell its own stories and sell these stories abroad. If inspiration from outside Poland does appear, it is rewritten by local sensitivity, interpreted and recontextualised. The Rad duo combines inspiration from Włocławek porcelain with Poznań drag queens, adding a pinch of retrofuturism. Joanna Hawrot creates kimonos, but gives them her own forms and covers them with the results of collaborations with Polish artists – classic designers such as Wojciech Sadley or contemporary creators such as Aleksandra Waliszewska and Maurycy Gomulicki. The Acephala duo is inspired by feminist figures such as Susan Sontag and the suffragettes, but the context of Polish emancipation in the form of Alina Szapocznikow’s body art or the Black Protests [a wave of protests a few years ago against strict new anti-abortion legislation] is also important to them. So it’s impossible to clearly separate all these areas, but each answers the question how they interpret influences: in their own way, without shamefully hiding their biographies or aesthetic roots.

DS x Waliszewska Cargo Pants Black, DS x Waliszewska Smoker Jacket by Dreamland Syndicate, photo: Dreamland Syndicate

With all this, does Polish fashion have a distinctive character today?

Definitely. And what’s more: it has distinctive characters, plural, because it is not a monolith. I’ve been trying to show this in my work for years. From my debut collection of reports Modni: Od Arkadiusa do Zienia (The Fashionable: From Arkadius to Zień), through to the volume about Polish fashion history that I edited, Reason and Flair: A Century of Fashion in Poland, my various podcasts and radio shows, like the podcast series Supernowa about Arkadius and the TV documentary series Mody Polskie (Polish Fashions) that I produce for TVP Kultura, as well as my projects at the Kraina Foundation.

I show through all of these that Polish fashion is not only distinctive today, but also important – socially, culturally – and can serve as a platform for cultural encounters, a medium for negotiating identity and space. It can also help us understand who we are today, particularly in times of crisis. These designers, these expressive characters, have several key features in common: they are authentic, a product of grassroots work, and stubborn. Despite all the odds: despite consumerism and the productivisation of fashion, despite the lack of academic and state support, despite the fact they operate in a place that is often ignorant towards them, they continue to deepen and expand their field of influence.

Selected works by Joanna Hawrot – Image Gallery

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Are there any specific features that distinguish Polish fashion from other countries? What might interest foreign audiences today the most?

Certainly the story of its resilience, its survival despite everything. It takes action despite the lack of a sustainable fashion system, despite constant plunder, shortages, war, displacement, poverty, loss of property and security, totalitarianism, lack of taste, and uniformity.

Polish fashion is, by its very nature, a responsible fashion. Fast fashion appeared in our country in response to Western industrial strategies, but our fashion DNA is, on the one hand, like a cottage industry, working with what’s at hand, while simultaneously applying quality, craftsmanship and attachment to clothing as a carrier of identity.

Fashion in Poland is not a stronghold of elites, it has no bourgeois, conservative narrative. It has subversive potential, it is folk, rude, political, rebellious. And if it craves stability, it wants to base it on art, poetry, the classical and the quality of workmanship.

Full list of designers whose work will be featured in the East Bound show: Acephala, Anna Orska, Bohema Clothing, CACKO, Dreamland Syndicate, Gosia Baczyńska, Irina Dzhus, Jerzy Antkowiak/Julia Kromolicka, Joanna Hawrot, KANVA, Katsiaryna Nestsiarovich, Michał Szulc, Pat Guzik, Rad Duet, Radek Anais Laro, Tanya May, Tasha Katsuba, Tomasz Ossoliński, Vanda Novak.

The East Bound show forms a part of the cultural programme of the Polish Presidency of the EU Council.

Interview originally conducted by Przemysław Gulda in Polish in April 2025, translated by Michał Pelczar in May 2025.

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