Bespoke from Warsaw, Poland

[zaki]

Dear Gentlemen,

I have been an avid reader of your forum since last summer. I ventured into fascinating world of male elegance and style from Apparel Arts and clearly have become a hobbyist.

As a short bio: I lived in Dublin, Ireland from 2007 till 2010 and at the end of the year I moved back to Warsaw. Around that time I started to look around for bespoke tailoring and shoe making in my home country. Warsaw just before the Second World War was well known as a place of great bespoke shoe makers in Europe. Then Hitler came and Stalin followed who crushed free trade and closed open market. Some of the tailors, shoe makers and others artisans had to close down. Relatively few survived the communism and are still trying to meet their ends. Bespoke market is divided into very old guard (65-85 y. o.), who are still doing their job and don’t have successors. Those old fellas come from the time when ordering a suit at the tailor was a necessity. They do not stock fabrics and their small workshops are not luxurious. You do need to do your homework first because they are not used to sartorial clientèle. Apart from them we have two old established and luxurious tailor houses (Zaremba in Warsaw, and Turbasa in Cracow). They will be the equivalent of London’ Savile Row. In terms of bespoke shoe makers our market here in Warsaw is even stronger. We have 8 bespoke shoe makers only in Warsaw and they do great shoes. They tend to cost ca. 500 euro but it is fully bespoke shoe. Some use Polish leather (good reputation) some will go for an English one. It is possible to find a cheaper one but as you know you will have to go for a lower quality. An example in the attachment. Shoe by a Polish shoe legend Tadeusz Januszkiewicz ordered for one on my friends.

I have recently commissioned a jacket with cuffed sleeves and it is time to present this little piece of Polish and Irish hand work. Trousers are brown Polish gabardine with 4.5 cm cuffs and 21 cm sleeve width. Jacket is from beautiful hand woven Donegal Tweed bought at Kevin and Howlin in Dublin. It is not fused but made on canvas. After reading your forum and Hardy Amies great Abc of Men’s Fashion I convicted my tailor to do ticket button, slanting pockets, turn-backs and higher gorge. More pictures here at http://www.szarmant.pl/donegal-tweed-ni ... -elegancja



The jacket and trousers were done by a local elder tailor from the suburbs of Warsaw. His name is Mr. Czeslaw Orciuch (picture below) and he is one of the tailors from the old guard (82 yo!!). I did a fascinating interview with him and I may translate it into English if there is any interest. It has not been published at my blog yet. I am also running a blog http://www.szarmant.pl about male elegance and style but so far it is in Polish. It is based around adventures of Walter Szarmant (Walter Charmant) who is my alter ego, a fictional character and one of the subtitles of my blog is anthropology of male elegance (I have MA in culture anthropology). I recently started a new blog in English http://www.thefinedandy.com/




We also have a Polish forum about male elegance and bespoke tailoring. It is at http://www.bespoke.pl

If you have any questions about bespoke scene in Warsaw and Poland in general, please ask. I am also waiting for you comments even if very harsh regarding my jacket. I know that it is not perfect and you are the peak of sartorial elegance but that is why your comments will be much appreciated.

Regards,

Roman

[ismailalmurtadza]

Mr.Zaki,
Nice jacket .
I am from W Malaysia and my daughter is studying Medicine at Warsaw University.She's in her 3 rd. year.I am going to email her about the bespoke shoes and will ask her to contact you for any information require.Suggest that you also do English version in your blog.

murtadza

[Simon A]

Hello Roman,

A very nice outfit, you wear it well.

Your comments about the decline of tailoring after the Soviet invasion no doubt would be echoed by members from other former Warsaw Pact countries and the former Soviet Union. Here in Georgia, the few artisans still in the trade are having to go to museums and libraries to learn the architecture and construction of garments.

Good luck with your blog.

[SMCK]

Well done for both your jacket and your blog which would be good in english.
You did ask for comment, I like your jacket but find that the fit seems not great.
You seem to be holding your left shoulder slightly higher which may explain why it looks not right. The waist seems a little full or maybe the slightly oversized ticket pocket makes it seem so. It would be useful to see back and side views.

[Costi]

A warm welcome to the Lounge, Roman!

Thank you for taking the time to introduce yourself so extensively - the pictures show a man of distinction to me!
Your Donegal jacket must have been a challenge for your 82-yo tailor - you do like a four-course meal, plus coffee, drinks and cigar
I found your "mission statement" on your blog very appealing (it appears in the bio section and I used Google Translate to get the meaning, so please feel free to amend my text):
"I understand dress as a kaleidoscope of hidden signs and symbols that reflect our culture. I believe that a man can lead a fascinating dialogue with the world trough his personal style."
It sounds like a meaningful approach centered on dress rather than clothes and, since I can't make out much more than that using Google Translate, I'm eager to read more on this from a culture anthropologist. To add to the tailoring perspective of modern day Poland (in which, to agree with Simon, I recognize much from the situation in my own country), perhaps it would be interesting to cast some light on how elegance and style are (were) regarded and embodied there. After all, tailoring and shoemaking and other connected crafts follow the need for personal expressions of style in any given society. What does this "dialogue with the world" of a man interested in elegance sound like in today's Warsaw?

[zaki]

Costi,

Indeed I like fine living. It must be in the eyes According to my tailor I was one of the most demanding customers he could remember. But he also concluded that he had enjoyed the job because it had offered him great craftsman satisfaction and new experience (at his age!). He rarely works on Donegal Tweed, if ever. The main reason he still works is to use his words " I love my job and it is keeping me alive and in a good form".

Surprisingly Google translation worked quite well:
""I understand dress as a kaleidoscope of hidden signs and symbols that reflect our culture. I believe that a man can lead a fascinating dialogue with the world trough clothes he chooses to wear." Once a man realizes that, it is a backbone of his personal style which he will develop with time. I am still developing my style and clothes are definitely part of it. But in terms of male elegance I reckon behaviour is more important. I believe that elegant cloths follow your behaviour, not the other way around.

Dressing well in Poland is a struggle but a fascination one. We are not a very tolerant society and if you stand out from the mainstream, it will raise suspicion. One of the many bad things that communists did to us was the deterioration of a good taste and creation of a sameness. Even after 21 years of Capitalism an ideology of an uncouth louth is still omnipresent in my country in everyday living. Thankfully there are people who dare to be different and they are trying to change that.

Clothes or dress in general is heavily permeated with symbols. Even an allegedly humble statement: "I don't care about what I wear", so popular between males in Poland, is a sort of powerful ideology of alleged masculinity. In fairness if we look at the past, it has nothing with being masculine. It is a symbol of laziness, deterotiation of good taste and lack of willingness for a challenge . 1930's in Poland was also a golden decade of the style and we had a fair dose of a great dandies back then. But then we had communism and everything changed. Tailcoats and dinner jacket were abandoned as a sign of old regime. A man could only wear a suit in quiet colours. In 1950's we had an underground subculture called 'bikiniarze' and one of their symbols were colourful socks. You were not allowed to wear coloured socks (and clothes) back then, because you stood out too much. Late 1960's and 1970's and 1980's it was a triumph of mass textile industry and jeans' intoxication coming from the West. Levi's jeans were no longer forbidden, but very difficult to obtain and became a symbol status and the ultimate sign of appropriate dress in Poland. It is worth noting that American jeans were also a symbol of protest against communism. In effect a generation of men in their 35-55 years old, jeans generation, is probably the worst dressed in the history of Polish society. Some members from UK or Ireland will easily spot a Polish fella form that generation in the crowd in an awful jeans, large t-shirt, trainers and moustache with a plastic bag. Jeans, in their very unappealing blue denim hue are still the mainstream. To be clear, I do like navy jeans but not with everything and not everyday.

In terms of bespoke shoes and suits I cannot say that we have our original Polish style. Cherry and oxblood whole cuts have become very popular between our small crowd at bespoke.pl Members of bespoke.pl tend to go in two directions: Italian or English one. Polish tailors from the Old Guard will be closer to an English school of tailoring. At the moment I lack the knowledge but I suspect heavy influences from Germany and Austria.

SMCK - indeed there is a feeling of fullness in the jacket, but I am not sure it is bad. My chest looks bigger than actually is and I like that feeling. Will work on my posture for next photo session. Ticket pocket might have been a tad smaller. But my tailor likes to do things a bit bigger. Can't stand with a ruler around him

[Costi]

As far as the dialogue between man and the world is concerned, in Poland as elsewhere, I think I can quote a national philosopher who wrote that there are two kinds of solitude: that of those who speak and that of those who don't listen to them...
Good point, the choice to dress indifferently IS a choice, as much as any other. It is a significant choice in a world where little invites us to affirm, to construct - while we tend just to negate, to tear down and put nothing in place.
The quest for elegance and, ultimately, Style, is one of the spirit. Therefore, symbols are very much at home in this quest. Dressing well is not a matter of "packaging" ourselves attractively, to use a marketing term, but to make our appearance sym-bolize (project together) with our inner quest for ourselves. It's not as complicated or rarefied as it may sound, it is rather an everyday exercise that we may practise to the benefit of both sides of the equation. Since dressing according to our inner state can sound pretentious and hard to apply in practice, let's invert the equation and start from the other end: let's try to know ourselves, to understand ourselves better THROUGH dress - which we have to do every day anyway. That is, let's reflect, while we dress, on how we make our choices, why we choose one thing over another, what it is that we find satisfying in a certain way of puffing the pocket square or displeasing in the way a tie works with a shirt. So, dress intuitively, but also consider that our choices are symbolic of more than meets the eye and use the intellect to cast light on these mechanisms, studying ourselves. In turn, this understanding can help us open a wider horizon and improve our dress, our Style.

[Marlin]

I would like to know more about Polish shoemakers. I am planning a trip to Warsaw and would possibly order shoes.

[alden]

Zaki

Welcome to the LL. I read your post and content of your blog with great interest. You clearly have found a group of people who share your interest in Style here in the LL.

It is also pleasing to see the excellent work from your local tailor. With all the bespoke branding going on in various forums, it is nice to see these elegant results from an independent. I should add that some of the very best bespoke clothes posted anywhere on the net, come from these experienced and often unknown craftsmen.

Cheers

Michael Alden

[zaki]

Dear Gentlemen,

After your encouragement I decided to start blogging in English about Polish bespoke scene, elegance and style from a perspective of a culture anthropologist and also hobbyist. I am starting with a project "DB suit with 3 patch pockets" to be made by Piotr Kamiński, tailor from Warsaw. You are all welcome and I am looking forward to your feedback. I am planning to have one entry per week.

http://www.thefinedandy.com/

Cheers,

Roman