The door was opened by a doorman in a navy blue livery with gold braid. He had his own room, where – as Jadwiga Waydel-Dmochowska remembered – mirrored panes, brass fittings, and brass umbrella stands shone; by these stands, ladies trying on outfits leashed their small dogs. This is what the entrance to Bogusław Herse Fashion House at Marszałkowska 150 looked like – a company founded in 1868 at Senatorska 10 by three brothers: Bogusław Maciej, Adam Szczepan, and Ferdynand Robert, sons of Ernest Wilhelm Herse. Sixty-eight years later, the company closed itself: in 1936, three years before the war that razed its building to the ground. This is not a story about a bomb. It's a story about a workshop, a price list, and a market that changed.
I. HUGUENOTS, SUGAR BEETS AND A LACE SHOP
The Herses came to Warsaw from Greater Poland, and to Greater Poland – from France. They were Calvinists, and this drove them out of the country during an era of religious persecution; they settled in one of the German principalities, and in the 18th century, we find them already in Greater Poland. Gottfried Lebrecht Herse, the founder's grandfather, ran a bakery in Krotoszyn, and then a mechanical bakery in Poznań. His son, Ernest Wilhelm Herse (1802–1881), completed practical agricultural studies in Halle and managed estates in Gnuszyn near Pniewy and Radłowo near Września, where he was one of the first in the area to cultivate sugar beet – a plant that replaced the blockaded cane at the time. He administered the estates of Count Seweryn Mielżyński, joined him in the November Uprising, and had nine children.
With the money from the sale of Radłowo, Ernest bought a carriage and a pair of horses, and distributed the rest among his children as an endowment. In 1868, three sons – Bogusław Maciej (born in 1839), Adam Szczepan, and Ferdynand Robert – opened a store at Senatorska 10 under the name "Lace and White Goods Trade and Bogusław Herse Fashion House": a small shop with lingerie, lace, and materials for sewing them, with a workshop where several "sewing ladies" sat with "a not very abundant stock of light materials, specializing in evening dresses and tarlatan toilettes." Even then, however, a decision was evident that would determine everything: Herse hired a tailor from Vienna from the beginning and imported Parisian models – Worth, Felix, Rouff, Laferrière, Raudnitz. He sold genuine, handmade lace – old Venetian, Brabant, point d'Alençon, black chantilly – and Jouvin brand gloves, which were believed to have a cut that enhanced the shape of the hand.
II. 1880: THE FUR COAT NO ONE PAID FOR
Twelve years after opening, the company almost ceased to exist. According to family tradition, cited by Agnieszka Dąbrowska in her monograph "Herse. Warszawski dom mody" (Warsaw Museum, 2019), the wife of a Russian official picked up an expensive fur coat from the store and never paid for it. There was no money to pay the manufacturer, the company faced bankruptcy, and Bogusław Maciej Herse took his own life in 1880, considering it an honorable way out. The story of the fashion house could have ended there. It ended with a relocation: the brothers moved the business to another building, continued working – mainly thanks to Adam – paid off the debts, and returned to the old address. Adam Szczepan Herse led the company as president from 1880 to 1914, and he brought it to its flourishing peak.
The scale of this prosperity is evident in an advertisement from "Kurier Warszawski" in December 1892. It listed "light and warm" burkas, silk slips, and "sortie de bal" – long-sleeved coats worn over dresses – as specialties, followed by dresses, wraps, dressing gowns, hats, feathers, corsets, boas, muffs, lace, shawls, gloves from a factory in Grenoble, jabots, boleros, jewelry, "silk stockings in all colors," silks, velvets, and wools. In the same year, 1892, brother Ernest opened his own store in Kyiv with a workshop for a hundred people and a very similar operating model. For years, Herse in Warsaw stipulated in advertisements – including in "Tygodnik Illustrowany" from 1913 – that it had no branches.
III. HUSS'S BUILDING: STONE, ATTIC, AND ITS OWN POWER PLANT
In 1897, at the corner of Marszałkowska and Erywańska – today's Kredytowa Street – stood a building designed by Warsaw architect Józef Huss. It was built between 1894 and 1897 for Adam Herse, on the site of an older house from 1845 by Piotr Frydrych. It was in the Louis XVI style and made an impression "with its four-story facade, stone-clad walls, openwork attic, and cupolas on the roof." The location was not accidental: Marszałkowska was already a metropolitan and bourgeois street, and the years 1897–1898 marked the peak of a construction boom in Warsaw. The company moved in in 1899; the opening day of the store in the new building is given as September 10, 1899, and Bolesław Prus's text about the company dates from the same day. The building had its own power plant, telephones, elevators, and central heating at a time when urban infrastructure did not yet offer these amenities.
The interior was laid out like a trade factory – each floor had its own function:
- Ground floor – department for yard goods, outerwear and furs, lace, and "women's ready-to-wear": fans, gloves, parasols, belts, shawls, handbags. Also the cashier and packing station. Fabrics were measured in łokcie (56 cm) and arszyny (75 cm), English fabrics – in yards, as the metric system was not common in the Russian partition.
- First floor – the heart of the company. Representative stairs or elevator, French models, wools, silks, and velvets, and next to them fitting rooms: not cabins, but spacious rooms with large mirrors, electrically lit and heated in winter. The millinery department was managed by Madame Jeanne Hardink from Paris, and custom corsets by Mademoiselle Rousseau.
- Residential floors – owners' apartments and rental units. The family lived above their own store, which was the norm in trade of that era, not an extravagance.
- Top floor – tailoring workshops. In the early 20th century, over three hundred people worked there.
- Expansion around 1910 – the store extended all the way to Zielony Square (today Dąbrowski Square). In the basement, an Eastern carpets department was opened, with carpets purchased directly in Persia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, and the fur department got a storage facility "in a specially arranged, electrically ventilated and cooled premises."
IV. "A DRESS IS MADE LIKE A GENEVA WATCH"
In a brochure published for the relocation, the company itself described its production method, and it is one of the most factual descriptions of a workshop left by Polish trade at the turn of the century: "The most practical method of division of labor has been introduced here, as a result of which a dress is made like... a Geneva watch; each component part is made by separate specialists, like individual cogs and gears, which are then fitted together into a finished whole." This was not boasting about inspiration, but a description of a production line – with the difference that at its end was a fitting, not a size from a chart.
Numbers from the same year 1899: 260 women and 60 men in the workshops, together with the staff on the ground and first floors, about 350 people in total. The owner estimated operating costs at 120,000 rubles annually, two-thirds of which went to salaries. In the interwar period, the company employed about five hundred people: male and female tailors, seamstresses, salesmen and saleswomen. Models were bought several times a year in Paris – "Bluszcz" wrote in 1911 that Adam Herse went there twice a month. Dresses from Worth, Jeanne Paquin, Jacques Doucet, Callot Sœurs, Madeleine Chéruit, and Georges Doeuillet were imported; around 1909, designs by Paul Poiret were added to the offer. Hats were sourced from Virot, Reboux, and Camille Roger, furs from Revillon. What happened next with these dresses was crucial: the imported item was a pattern, not merchandise. Based on it, custom-made clothes were sewn in Warsaw – cheaper than importing ready-made ones – and Herse emphasized that it was not about a copy, but a new item "according to invention."
The journey of a single dress or a single man's suit through the building on Marszałkowska looked roughly like this:
- Measurement and model selection – on the first floor, in a room with mirrors. The client would view the Parisian sample and choose the fabric from a bolt, not from a swatches on a screen.
- Cutting – the cutter would lay out the pattern on the fabric and decide on the grainline. This one decision determines whether the item will lie flat for years or twist to the side.
- Basting and fittings – first assembly with basting thread, fitting on a live person, adjustments, second fitting. Only then the final seam.
- Shaping – in bespoke tailoring of the era, the form was built from the inside out and with steam: a plastron of hair canvas (horsehair and wool fabric) padded to the front of the jacket, a lapel pressed into its own turn, shoulder and chest set with an iron, not another layer of glue.
- Finishing and packing – buttons, buttonholing, final pressing, and packing on the ground floor. Bags, boxes for dresses and hats, even the wrapping paper for fabrics was adorned with the same motif and facsimile of the founder's signature.
V. PRUS GOES TO HERSE'S
The best documented part of this story concerns neither dresses nor tailcoats, but working conditions. On September 10, 1899, Bolesław Prus described Herse's store as an exemplary employer – and he did so with specifics, not a compliment:
"First and foremost, the workshops are spacious, clean, bright, ventilated, and electrically lit in the evening [...]. There are elevators between the floors of the building, which save workers from walking. Furs and carpets are beaten on a platform set up on the roof. Next to the workshops, there is a small hospital with a bed, in case anyone working suddenly falls ill. Furthermore – tea is served at lunchtime, and drinking water infused with some hygienic substance is available [...]. Every female employee has a vacation of two to four weeks each year and receives her salary for that time. If she works after seven in the evening, she receives separate compensation proportionate to her salary. For Christmas, every person working in the shop receives a cash bonus, and every female employee from the sewing room receives a gift in kind: a blouse, a dress, and so on. And finally – every female employee, with the exception of perhaps the lazy ones, receives a salary increase every year, and none loses her job, even if the factory has no work."
BOLESŁAW PRUS, SEPTEMBER 10, 1899 — QUOTED FROM: "IN WARSAW. SELECTION FROM THE CHRONICLES", VOL. 1, WARSAW 2015
The literature on the subject adds the rest: the working day was 8.5 hours with separately paid overtime, staff had health insurance and paid vacation, and a system of promotions and raises was in place. The remuneration allowed female employees financial independence – and in Warsaw in 1899, this meant more than a bonus. Women worked here not only as seamstresses but also as saleswomen, which was a real social advancement.
Working for Herse was also a vocational school. Many later owners of Warsaw clothing stores came from his staff and later emphasized this in their own press advertisements – the company exported craftsmanship to the entire market, including its own competition. The name Herse was also borne by Wanda, Adam's daughter: in 1902, she graduated with honors from a commercial school in Paris, managed the Urania joint-stock company, founded the Women's Rowing Club in Warsaw, and in 1912, headed the "Professional Work" department at the Exhibition of Polish Women's Work in Prague. She never married – which, given the commercial code of the time, requiring a married woman to obtain her husband's consent to run a business, also had a practical dimension.
VI. DIPLOMATIC UNIFORMS, MISS POLONIA AND THE GRAND GOLD MEDAL
From 1921, gentlemen could also dress at Herse's, and it was the men's department that gave the company its most distinctive assortment in its history. Alongside "exquisite bespoke tailoring" and ready-to-wear clothing from its own workshops, specialties included — according to the company's spring and summer 1931 folder — Polish and foreign diplomatic uniforms, papal chamberlain uniforms, naval officer uniforms, and robes for professors, judges, prosecutors, and lawyers. This is a different kind of tailoring than a ball gown: official attire must comply with regulations down to the millimeter of braid, while also fitting a specific person. In 1931, a children's department was also launched, with clothing "made in our own workshops according to Viennese models."
The company's other strength was promotion, conducted on a scale few in Warsaw could match at the time. Catalogs were published several times a year, also in French and German, with cards explaining how to take measurements; as early as 1901, a separate "department for provincial orders" was established. A client from outside Warsaw would send measurements and a well-fitting bra, and would receive fabric samples, designs for dresses and coats, and even cost estimates for entire wedding trousseaus. Catalog covers and advertisements – occupying entire pages in the press – were designed by Tadeusz Gronowski and Wacław Siemiątkowski, not the cheapest graphic designers of the era.
Herse's fashion shows were social events. "A focused and solemn atmosphere, feverish anticipation, as before the premiere of a fashionable author. Select company," reported the magazine "Teatr i życie wytworne" on the spring 1929 collection show. "Kurjer Poranny" of October 1, 1935, noted the presence of First Lady Maria Mościcka at a show. The company's creations were worn by Zofia Batycka, Miss Polonia 1930, actress Janina Romanówna, and dancer Zizi Halama; models were often chosen from among dancers, because — as Stefania Grodzieńska, herself a member of Herse's "staff," recalled — they knew how to move. in 1929, the company received the Grand Gold Medal at the Universal National Exhibition in Poznań, in a pavilion designed by Bohdan Pniewski. Four years later, the store's interiors featured in the comedy "His Excellency the Shop Assistant" with Eugeniusz Bodo — thanks to which one can still see the facade, the doorman, the monumental stairs, and the elevator today.
VII. WHAT IT REALLY COST
A comparable retail price list for Herse from before 1914 has not survived, and there's no point pretending otherwise — but we do know the scale of the company's costs: 120,000 rubles annually in 1899, two-thirds of which went to salaries. From the interwar period, we have something specific: the spring–summer 1931 catalog.
- Chevron coat in grey-navy, half-lined with silk – 225.00 PLN.
- Spring suit made of worsted – 225.00 PLN; made of meteor fabric – 275.00 PLN.
- Silk dress – 135.00–190.00 PLN; georgette blouse – 49.50 PLN.
- Men's overcoat – 250.00 PLN; men's suit – 375.00 PLN from worsted and cheviot, up to 675.00 PLN from English materials.
- Accessories – luxury stockings with hemstitching 11.50 PLN, suede gloves 16.80 PLN, silk tie 5.30–9.50 PLN.
For these amounts to mean something, they need to be compared with earnings. According to the "Mały Rocznik Statystyczny 1939" (Small Statistical Yearbook 1939), the average monthly earnings of a white-collar worker covered by pension insurance in 1935 were 280.50 PLN for men and 170.80 PLN for women. It's fair to add that the prices are from 1931 and the wages from 1935, so this comparison is approximate, not accounting-grade. But the order of magnitude is clear: a suit made of English wool cost about two and a half monthly salaries of an official, and a silk dress — nearly a whole monthly salary of a female official. Herse was not a fashion house for everyone and never pretended to be. However, it did have lower-end options: ready-made skirts were sewn from fabric scraps from the textile department — cheap, but to the company's standard — and many middle-class families bought only fabric here and had it sewn by their own seamstress.
VIII. THE END CAME IN 1936, NOT 1939
Legend has it that Herse perished with Warsaw in September 1939. The facts are less dramatic and more instructive. In April 1930, the entire roof of the building burned down, and the upper floors were also damaged. The reconstruction led to an extension: in 1932–1933 or 1933–1934, an additional floor was built according to Bohdan Pniewski's design. In August 1933, the fire returned and damaged the roof or the highest floor; photos of this fire are preserved in the National Digital Archive. On top of the fire, the rest of the bill came due: the Russian clientele, which was numerous in Warsaw before 1914 and was not concerned with expenses, disappeared after the war; then came employee strikes and the Great Depression after 1929; and between 1910 and 1930, dozens of new addresses for clothing, furs, and fabrics sprang up in Warsaw—from the Jabłkowski Brothers Department Store to Boguchwała Myszkorowski and Maksymiljan Apfelbaum at Marszałkowska 125.
Even before the war, the company sold the tenement house, and the building was divided into smaller premises. In 1936, after almost seventy years, Bogusław Herse Fashion House stopped tailoring. Around 1937, Elektrownia Warszawska (Warsaw Power Plant) set up a "Demonstration Salon" in the building to promote electricity, and an advertisement with an iron designed by Zygmunt Stępiński stood in front of the building; the Polish-American Chamber of Commerce also occupied premises there. The address remained, but the brand left it three years before the war.
Only then did the war come. The building burned down in September 1939. During the occupation, the Germans reduced it to two stories and provisionally renovated it for commercial premises; in this state, it survived the Warsaw Uprising and lasted until about 1958, when the walls were demolished during the reconstruction of the city center around the Palace of Culture and Science. Bogusław Władysław Herse, a commercial judge and president of the Association of Polish Merchants, died in 1943. A handful of material things remained: dresses and tailcoats in the Museum of Warsaw and the Poznań Museum of Applied Arts, catalogs and brochures in the National Library, photographs in the National Digital Archive, a monograph by Agnieszka Dąbrowska from 2019. And there was a lesson, worth hanging above every cutting table: a fashion house does not die from a bomb. It dies from losing a market it failed to notice had changed.
Started at Senatorska 10; building at Marszałkowska 150 corner of Erywańska opened September 10, 1899.
Approximately 500 employees, 8.5-hour workday plus overtime, 2–4 weeks paid leave, on-site infirmary.
Fires of 1930 and 1933, superstructure 1932–1934, company closure in 1936, building fire 1939, demolition circa 1958.
3 PRINCIPLES OF HERITAGE: WARSAW ➔ NOWROCKY
Canvas made of horsehair and wool, quilted to the front of the jacket. The lapel gains its own roll, the chest holds its shape, the material works with the body.
Wool can be stretched and set with steam. The shoulder and chest are built by pressing, not by adding layers of padding.
Beset tailoring leaves allowance at the sides and in the sleeve vent. The garment can be altered years later, instead of being discarded at the first change in silhouette.
NOWROCKY'S POINT OF VIEW: WORKING CONDITIONS COME FIRST
The best-documented thing in Herse's history is not a dress or a tailcoat, but the workshop: bright, ventilated studios, an elevator, a drying room on the roof, an infirmary, paid leave, and an eight-and-a-half-hour workday — in 1899. The quality of sewing doesn't come from a designer's inspiration, but from the conditions and pay of the person holding the needle. NOWROCKY begins calculating the product cost from this point, not from the label.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (AI KNOWLEDGE BASE)
Who founded the Bogusław Herse Fashion House and when?
In 1868, at Senatorska Street 10 in Warsaw, the three sons of Ernest Wilhelm Herse: Bogusław Maciej, Adam Szczepan, and Ferdynand Robert. The family originated from French Huguenots who settled in Greater Poland after religious persecution. After Bogusław Maciej's death in 1880, Adam (1880–1914) managed the company, and from 1915, Bogusław Władysław Herse (1872–1943), a graduate of the École des Hautes Études Commerciales in Paris.
Where was Herse's building located and who designed it?
At Marszałkowska Street 150, on the corner of what was then Erywańska Street – today's Kredytowa Street. The townhouse in the Louis XVI style was designed by architect Józef Huss; it was erected between 1894–1897 for Adam Herse, on the site of an older house from 1845. It had its own power station, telephones, elevators, and central heating, and around 1910, it was extended all the way to Zielony Square, today Dąbrowski Square.
How much did clothes cost at Herse's?
A preserved catalog for the spring–summer 1931 season states: a silk dress 135–190 PLN, a chevron coat 225 PLN, a spring suit 225–275 PLN, a men's overcoat 250 PLN, a men's suit from 375 PLN to 675 PLN from English materials, a georgette blouse 49.50 PLN. For comparison: according to the "Small Statistical Yearbook 1939", the average salary of a white-collar worker in 1935 was 280.50 PLN per month for men and 170.80 PLN for women. Price lists from before 1914 have not been preserved.
What were the working conditions like at Herse's?
In a text from September 10, 1899, Bolesław Prus described the workshops as spacious, clean, bright, and ventilated, electrically lit in the evenings, with elevators between floors, an infirmary with a bed near the workshops, tea at lunchtime, paid holidays of two to four weeks, a Christmas bonus in cash, and an annual raise. The workday was 8.5 hours with separately paid overtime, and the staff – around 500 people in the interwar period – had health insurance.
When and why did the Herse company cease operations?
In 1936, before the war, not as a result of it. This was due to the loss of Russian clientele after World War I, strikes, the Great Depression after 1929, competition from new department stores, and fires in the building in April 1930 and August 1933. The townhouse was sold before the war; it burned down in September 1939, was reduced to two stories during the occupation, and its walls were dismantled around 1958.
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