From the collections of the Moda Polska fashion house. A unique archive rediscovered after many years.

It was one of the most recognisable brands in the history of Polish fashion, and he was one of its most important designers. We are exploring the archives of the Moda Polska fashion company, found in the basement of Jerzy Antkowiak's house. Each week until autumn, at Vogue.pl, we will be presenting items from this collection. And in autumn you will have a chance to visit an exhibition we are supporting.

Moda Polska (Polish Fashion) – a state-owned enterprise established in 1958 after merging the EWA office for fashion shows and the Gallux-Hurt shops. Its main purpose was to show Polish women how to dress beautifully, but it was also meant, in part, to give the Polish People's Republic authorities something to boast about to the world.

Jerzy Antkowiak – graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, ceramist by education and fashion designer by avocation. He started working at Moda Polska in 1961. In the autumn of 1960, the Palace of Culture and Science hosted a design fair. Its programme included a fashion show by Moda Polska. The 25-year-old Antkowiak, so the story goes, managed somehow to get behind the scenes. And he saw everything: the catwalks, the girls, clothes for dancing, clothes for walking the famous Krupówki Street, and the audience dressed in their Sunday best. Enchanted, he approached Jadwiga Grabowska, the famous art director of Moda Polska, and said he would like to work for her. He brought along some hurriedly-drawn sketches and soon became her assistant.

He continued to work at Moda Polska till the end of its existence in 1998. Upon leaving, he bought the clothes that had been filling the storerooms from the receiver and hid them in the basement of his house in Komorów.

2018 is going to be exciting!

It is 18 May 2015; Jerzy Antkowiak celebrates his eightieth birthday in Komorów. Among the guests are Moda Polska models and Tomasz Ossoliński, a fashion designer. The party is in progress. Later, all the guests go downstairs to see the basement. What they see are ball gowns, perfectly tailored jackets, coats and ready-to-wear garments.

“It was as if I had discovered a treasure,” recollects Ossoliński.

There were many clothing companies in the Polish People's Republic, but Moda Polska was more than just a clothing company. It was an institution where fashion history intertwined with the post-war history of the country

Antkowiak has been his guru for as long as he can remember. In the 80's, in much the same way as other little boys spend their free time watching cars, he would go to the Moda Polska showrooms in Katowice and look at the displays. In 1993, Ossoliński was studying at a technical college for the clothing industry. He learned that Jerzy Antkowiak was going to visit the school and attend the end-of-the-year show. “If the god is coming to my school, I need to do everything to make sure that he notices this little boy named Tomasz,” he thought. And so he made corsets, for they were a good way to demonstrate craftsmanship, while at the same time they did not require much fabric. Antkowiak liked them. When, a couple of years later, Ossoliński became the art director of the clothing enterprise Bytom, the president of the company asked Antkowiak to assess if this young designer was talented enough for the post. This time, too, Antkowiak liked him.

Last year, when Jerzy Antkowiak was experiencing family and health problems, Ossoliński, who has been working in Warsaw for several years, stood by him. On one social occasion, he returned to the famous basement; it was then that the idea was born to make a film about the designer and to bring the collection to light.

In October 2018, 60 years after Moda Polska was established, the Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź will launch a grand exhibition of Jerzy Antkowiak's work. It will be curated by Tomasz Ossoliński, who is also the producer of the documentary about Antkowiak, which will be premiered in early 2019. Both projects have been supported by Vogue. Each week until autumn, we will be sharing stories about Moda Polska with you at Vogue.pl.

Moda Polska

There will be plenty to write about! There were many clothing companies in the Polish People's Republic, but Moda Polska was more than just a clothing company. It was an institution where fashion history intertwined with the post-war history of the country, where luxury met scarcity and where creativity and bureaucracy existed alongside each other; it was a place of intense emotions and, last but not least, of great fun.

In the first years of its existence, the company or, to be more precise, the design studio was managed by the charismatic Jadwiga Grabowska. She was born in 1898 into the wealthy Seydenbeutel family; she knew post-war Paris and was personally acquainted with Coco Chanel. She wanted to give a Parisian touch to the womenswear produced in the Polish People's Republic. As head of the EWA office for fashion shows, she did not have to worry about factory-made garments. Moda Polska intended to show trends from Parisian catwalks (by designing the so-called lead collections twice a year), but also to make fashionable ready-to-wear clothes (by designing commercial collections and running a nationwide chain of stores).

Grabowska preferred the former because she could not stand bureaucratic limitations. Each season, she would go to the haute-couture shows in Paris and bring back fabric samples. She was able to persuade ministers and influential officials to give priority to the fabrics she wanted that could be produced in the domestic factories and to allocate hard currency for those from abroad. She was the brains behind much of what later became the DNA of the brand:

– the clear message – Moda Polska is fashion, not just clothes;

– the models – Grabowska required from them more than just good looks;

– the consistency in the brand's graphic identity – the logo with a swallow, designed by Jerzy Treutler, adorned packaging, tags and neon lights, and the advertising poster by Roman Cieślewicz, depicting Queen Nefretiti with a rose on her head, carried much of the brand's message: the collage technique alluded to dreams for the future, while the image of the Egyptian queen referred back to tradition.

Moda Polska, like any other enterprise in the Polish People's Republic, had a very forceful administrative staff – complaining that fashion shows were too expensive and asking why he needed silk if he could use crimplene

In 1967, Grabowska left the job of art director, and the position was taken over by Halina Kłobukowska. The design studio, however, was unofficially led by Jerzy Antkowiak. Even in the earlier years, he had not always been compliant to his boss. In 1965, he secretly organised a fashion show of the carnival collection he had designed with Tula Popławska. It featured short dresses – some simple, resembling sleeveless tops, worn with chiffon and lace coats, others elaborate, made of black or golden satin, with open backs and forms concealed under decorative pleats and trims. The show ended with a presentation of evening gowns – they were made of soft, black, white or black-and-golden velour, colourful silk or embroidered satin. The boy clearly was gifted.

By avoiding conventional design Antkowiak made his own contribution to the company's DNA.

He shared the design studio with such icons as Kalina Paroll, Irena Biegańska, Magda Ignar, Krystyna Dziak and Krystyna Wasylkowska. In 1979, he became its official manager and was made deputy director. His memories of that time are not happy. Instead of creating fashion, he had to take part in discussions and meetings concerning topics such as planning arrangements, sewers’wages or opening new showrooms. He had to listen to administrative directors (Moda Polska, like any other enterprise in the Polish People's Republic, had a very forceful administrative staff) complaining that fashion shows were too expensive and asking why he needed silk if he could use crimplene, which women supposedly adored, and why a wedding dress had to be adorned with as many as 320 organza roses if those underneath would crease anyway.

Despite it all, he managed to lead Moda Polska through the crisis in the 80's, and, what is more, proved that it was possible to make fashion even in times when nothing was obtainable and you could not even be sure if the black velour jacket in the drawing would not turn into an orange one made of cord.

The collection he designed for the 1982 fair in Leipzig went down in history. At that time, Poland was under martial law, so there was no access to fabrics or even journals; but against all odds, Antkowiak did create a collection (or a set, as he would call it). “I wouldn't call this set a collection. I prefer to think of it as ‘impressions on certain contemporary fashion styles’. Its individual elements, the skirts, trousers etc., allow for various combinations and are useful for expanding one's wardrobe,” he would explain to journalists. The collection featured outfits made of drill fabric, which would normally be used in tent production and was complemented with models' own clothes and accessories.

It would be difficult to make a full A to Z list of fashion phenomena in the Polish People's Republic. But if such a list was completed, you would need to search Moda Polska under the letter A. Because A is for Antkowiak.

Backstage stories

“Demna Gvasalia would go crazy if he could see this,” says Tomasz Ossolinski as we browse through the clothes that have been transferred from Komorów to the Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź. I am close to craziness, too, because it is not only clothes that have arrived at the museum (900 hangers in total, many with more than one item) but also an immense archive of paper artefacts: Antkowiak's design drawings, which demonstrate how his pencil stroke evolved over the decades, feature article manuscripts, Moda Polska's official documents, newspaper excerpts, invitations to Parisian fashion shows, unpublished photos for advertising campaigns.

Before you get the chance to see part of the collection in Łódź, make sure you check Vogue.pl – we want to show you the most interesting items and share some backstage stories. #wkontakcie

Aleksandra Boćkowska – journalist whose articles appear i.a. in Gazeta Wyborcza and Wysokie Obcasy Extra, former editor at Elle and Viva! Moda magazines, author of the book on fashion in the Polish People's Republic titled To nie są moje wielbłądy. O modzie w PRL (literally: „These are not my camels“, because everyone was fighting about fashion in the People’s Republic like the Tuareg people would fight over their camels).

Translation Elżbieta Pawlas/Solid Information Solutions