A full canvas jacket is a load-bearing construction: between the wool and the lining, there is an unfused layer of canvas and horsehair interlining, held together by thousands of needle stitches. A contemporary chain-store jacket, in contrast, has hot-pressed interfacing here – and an expiry date equal to the lifespan of the glue. This chapter is about that difference, and about the fact that the elite of Warsaw tailoring had names, addresses, and dates – completely different from those circulating online.
The title of this chapter states "Zygmunt Kamiński". Zygmunt Kamiński was never a tailor – he was a graphic artist, painter, and professor at the Warsaw University of Technology, the author of the official design for the coat of arms of the Republic of Poland. An earlier version of this text attributed to him a workshop at Bracka 18 along with a price list; neither such a tailor nor such an establishment at this address is confirmed by sources. The title remains unchanged so that the record of the error is visible. The content has been corrected.
I. BRACKA 18: AN ADDRESS WHERE THERE WAS NO TAILOR
Zygmunt Kamiński (November 22, 1888 – October 12, 1969) studied drawing under Konrad Krzyżanowski and Ferdynand Ruszczyc, and graduated from the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts with a silver medal under Józef Mehoffer. He was a co-founder of the Faculty of Architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology and its dean three times (1930–1931, 1937–1939, 1945–1946), and from 1915–1960 he headed the Department of Freehand Drawing there. He designed 20 and 50 PLN banknotes for the Bank of Poland, stamps, coins, sgraffito on the Sejm building – and the national emblem design from 1927. During the occupation, he co-organized underground architecture education. There is no needle in this biography.
Nor is there one at the legendary address. According to the documentation of the Warsaw 1939 Foundation, Bracka 18 is the Kiersnowska tenement house, a front building from the late 19th century designed by Edward Lilpop. It housed Henryka Czarnocka's girls' school, then the Słowacki gymnasium, and after 1918 a boys' gymnasium and a primary school of L. Lorentz's successors. In 1944, the outbuildings and upper floors burned out. It was a school address, not a tailor's.
Bracka itself was not a street of tailors either. At the intersection with Chmielna, at the end of the 18th century, stood "Heca" – a wooden rotunda of Warsaw's first circus, an arena for animal fights, with seating for three thousand people. In 1913–1914, the Jabłkowski Brothers Department Store was built exactly where Heca stood, at number 25. Bracka was a street of commerce, not workshops. The city's tailoring elite worked elsewhere – and this can be documented down to the house number.
II. A GUILD OLDER THAN HALF OF EUROPE'S CAPITALS
The oldest trace of a Warsaw tailor dates back to 1339: during proceedings between King Casimir and the Teutonic Order, two tailors from Warsaw – Gunter and Jan – were among the witnesses. In 1380, Mazovian Duke Janusz I granted privileges to the tailors' guild; it was the first guild in the city's history – older than the shoemakers' (1473) and goldsmiths' (1516). At the end of the 15th century, the mayors of Warsaw were guild tailors Mikołaj Bąk and Mikołaj Klara, and from 1500, the tailor Wawrzyniec Kosseń held this office seven times. The guild purchased its premises at Krakowskie Przedmieście 41 in 1738 and still occupies them today.
The scale of the interwar period was enormous: as Dr. Rafał Radziwonka states in his study for the Museum of Warsaw, in 1937 there were 86 guilds in the capital – 50 Christian and 36 Jewish – and the number of craftsmen was estimated at over 153,000. The path to the title of master was as follows:
- Apprentice: three to five years of learning under a master, often living in their home.
- Journeyman: working in the workshop after passing the exam – only then was one allowed to sew for others.
- Journeyman's travels: three to five years in workshops in other cities. The craft was learned from several cutting schools, not just one.
- Masterpiece: about two years of preparation for an expensive exam. Only this granted the right to run a workshop and accept apprentices.
The most famous graduate of this path did not become a tailor. Władysław Reymont apprenticed from 1880–1884 with Konstanty Jakimowicz, and received his journeyman tailor's certificate in Warsaw in February 1884 – according to biographer Sławomir Koper, this was the only diploma the future Nobel laureate earned in his entire life. The guild counts him among its members, dates his master's diploma to 1894, and has had his plaque on its facade since 1965.
III. WHAT LIES BENEATH THE WOOL: HORSEHAIR, QUILTING, IRONING
A jacket doesn't hold its shape thanks to the outer fabric, but thanks to what's underneath. The supportive layer – in English floating canvas – is a panel sewn between the wool and the lining, woven so that the weft is horsehair and the warp is wool, cotton, linen, or synthetic fiber. The panel is not glued: it is loosely hand-stitched with a pad stitch, a series of angled punctures that roll the lapel into a springy curl and create convexity in the chest.
The amount of work is measurable. The London workshop Edward Sexton of Savile Row states that one bespoke suit involves over 80 hours of handiwork and over 30,000 hand stitches, with a minimum of three fittings. The cut itself was not drawn by eye either: the basis for Central Europe was the M. Mueller & Sohn system, founded in 1891 in Munich, which allowed the reconstruction of a silhouette's surface from numbers alone.
The difference between sewing and gluing is mechanical, not aesthetic:
- Horsehair interlining: Horsehair is elastic and returns to shape after being crushed. The interlining woven with it rebuilds the form after every arm movement. Heat-adhesive interfacing does not do this – it simply stiffens the surface.
- Working, not glued, layer: Unbonded layers shift relative to each other by fractions of a millimeter. This allows the jacket, after a few weeks of wear, to conform to a specific chest and shoulders.
- Adhesive failure: Fused interfacing, after washing and years of use, detaches from the fabric in spots. The result is bubbles on the front panels – an irreparable defect.
- Iron shaping: Wool is a protein fiber – moisture and temperature allow its geometry to be permanently changed. The tailor irons in bulges where the body has them. A better cut cannot replace this stage.
THREE LEVELS OF CONSTRUCTION – AND WHAT DIFFERENTIATES THEM
Canvas and horsehair interlining throughout the entire front, held together with pad stitching. Zero glue. Layers work with the body and return to shape.
Canvas only in the chest and lapel area, interfacing below. A compromise: chest shape maintained, lower front already glued.
Entire front fused with heat-adhesive interfacing. Cheapest and fastest. Delamination means bubbling and the end – repair is impossible.
IV. RAW MATERIAL AND PRICE: BIELSKO, LINEN AND PLN 9.50 FOR A SHIRT
A tailor is only as good as the fabric they get. Polish wool had one address, and that was Bielsko: the privilege for cloth weavers there was issued by Duke Wenceslaus III Adam in 1548, in 1734 there were 271 master weavers working in the city, and at the beginning of the 20th century, 75 factories operated in Bielsko and 15 in Biała. Andrychów, usually added to the same legend, did not produce wool – it produced linen. The raw material map looked like this:
- Bielsko and Biała – wool: the country's second largest textile basin after Łódź; in the early 1930s, about 13% of Polish textile production (data according to Piotr Kenig).
- Andrychów – linen, then cotton: first mention of linen production from October 1674; peddler merchants sold goods in Istanbul, Venice, Marseille, Hamburg, and Moscow. In 1907, the Czeczowiczka brothers launched a mechanical weaving mill – 850 employees and 520 looms.
- Milanówek – silk: Central Experimental Silk Station, founded in 1924 by siblings Henryk and Stanisława Witaczek; in the 1930s, satins, taffetas, and jacquard ties were sold from there in Warsaw stores.
The "Bracka tailors' price lists" circulating online have no source. Statistical data does. According to "Price Statistics 1937" (series C, issue 96, Warsaw 1938), a white men's shirt cost PLN 9.50, and a pair of factory-made low shoes cost PLN 24.66. On the other hand, according to the GUS "Small Statistical Yearbook": an industrial worker earned an average of PLN 102.77 per month in 1935 (a female worker PLN 53.32), a white-collar worker PLN 280.50, a teacher about PLN 200, a lieutenant PLN 324, a judge from PLN 425. A bespoke suit - several dozen hours of work, three fittings, a good wool coupon - was many times the price of ready-made clothing. Hence mending and inheriting instead of throwing away.
Bracka Street housed the best store in the country, not the best workshop. The Jabłkowski Brothers Department Store moved to its own building at number 25 on November 7, 1914 - until 1939, it was the only such establishment in Warsaw and the largest department store in Poland: about 200 employees, mail order sales, the city's first glass elevator. The luxury segment was held by Bogusław Herse Fashion House, moved in 1899 to a building on Marszałkowska Street, where the sewing room occupied the fourth floor - but in 1936, the company stopped making clothes. Bespoke tailoring remained with artisans.
V. THE ZAREMBAS: WARSAW'S MOST EXPENSIVE NEEDLE
If there was an elite of men's tailoring in interwar Warsaw with a name, address, and date, it was called Zaremba. The workshop was founded in 1894 by Edward Zaremba (1872–1931), who opened a tailor shop in the Grand Theatre building. After his death, the company was run by his son Zygmunt, and then by Adolf Zaremba (1898–1969), who opened a workshop at Hoża 6 in 1922, and at Wspólna 36 in 1927.
For a craft, it was almost industrial in scale: 15 journeymen, 2 cutters, an accountant, and a courier. Adolf's younger brother Tadeusz (1911–1998) learned the trade from him, and the company operated under the name "Bracia Zaremba" (Zaremba Brothers) – the most expensive men's suit workshop in Warsaw of those years. In 1933, Tadeusz opened his own establishment at Koszykowa 52, later moved to a salon at Koszykowa 40, on the corner of Marszałkowska. Hoża, Wspólna, Koszykowa, Krakowskie Przedmieście. Four addresses where Warsaw tailoring truly thrived. None of them are on Bracka.
VI. 1939–1945: SHOPS, PAWIAK AND HAIRCLOTH
In 1938, 368,394 Jews lived in Warsaw – 29.1% of the capital's inhabitants, the largest Jewish community in Europe, and the clothing industry was largely their industry. From mid-1941, German entrepreneurs began to take over and merge small Jewish workshops into so-called szopy (shops); the largest belonged to Walther Többens (textile) and Fritz Schultz (furrier). At Többens's on Prosta and Leszno, about 15,000 Jews worked, and at its peak, the shops employed about 40,000 people – artisans paid for their workspace with money or their own sewing machines.
The protection proved to be a fiction. On August 24, 1942, the Warsaw Arbeitsamt set a limit for Jewish employment at 30,000 people. During one "blockade" in Többens's shop on Prosta, 3,600 people, mostly women and children, were taken to their deaths. In May 1943, Többens moved his business with 10,000 workers to Poniatowa, and Schultz with 6,000 people and 400 children to Trawniki; on November 3, 1943, approximately 43,000 people were murdered in the Lublin district during "Aktion Erntefest".
Haircloth – the same fabric a tailor sews into a lapel – has its own chapter in this war. In 1941, an order was issued in the General Government to collect hair from barber shops. In August 1942, the SS-WVHA ordered hair longer than 2 centimeters to be collected in camps, and in February 1943, Oswald Pohl's report showed 3 tons of women's hair from Majdanek and Auschwitz. Half a mark was paid per kilogram.
The documentation is archival, not legendary. Materials from the Center for Information on Victims of World War II in the IPN Archive record a shipment of hair from Warsaw on November 30, 1944, and 1,950 kilograms of hair found in a plush and carpet factory in Kietrz; an expert opinion from the Institute of Forensic Research in Krakow on March 27, 1947, showed traces of hydrogen cyanide from Zyklon B in it. After the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in January 1945, about seven tons of human hair were found in warehouses. It was processed into felt, yarn, submarine gaskets, carpets – and haircloth.
Polish workshops paid their price separately. Adolf Zaremba was arrested in 1940 and imprisoned in Pawiak; his family spent months trying to get him out, and during that time, the Gestapo robbed his company under the guise of a search. Zygmunt Zaremba was executed by the Germans in 1943 for his underground activities. The salon burned down at the end of the war, and Tadeusz's workshop was destroyed during the uprising.
Bracka Street – Ordenstrasse in the occupied city – lay directly on the front line: the 2nd and 3rd companies of the AK "Kiliński" battalion took up defensive positions along Świętokrzyska, Nowy Świat, Warecka, Aleje Jerozolimskie, Bracka, Marszałkowska, and Złota. The Jabłkowski Brothers' department store remained open throughout the occupation, supplying the fighters with clothing, footwear, and food during the uprising; ammunition was also produced there – and it was one of the few buildings in the area to survive.
The Uprising had no uniforms. It had an order. On August 11, 1944, General Antoni Chruściel issued Order No. 14: "Every Home Army soldier shall wear a white-and-red armband." A piece of cloth became the only common insignia for soldiers of the army fighting in the city; preserved examples are now held, among other places, in the IPN Archive – some as deposits from the MBP, confiscated during post-war searches.
The story of serial, underground production of ammunition pouches and assault overalls in workshops on Bracka Street has no source and has been removed from this archive. Order No. 14, captured "panther" camouflage warehouses from August 1 and 2, and supplies issued from the Jabłkowski Brothers Department Store are documented. That is enough.
VII. PRL: ADDITIONAL TAX, BATTLE FOR TRADE, BIKINI TIE
Craftsmanship emerged from the war decimated but alive: in 1947, there were 138,000 registered craft workshops in Poland with 311,000 employees, 1,500 industry guilds, and 14 craft chambers. Then came the political decision. The "Battle for Trade" was initiated by Minister Hilary Minc's speech at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers' Party on April 13 and 14, 1947. On June 2, three laws were passed – on combating high prices, on citizens' tax commissions, and on permits for running enterprises; price gouging was punishable by up to 5 years in prison. The number of private shops fell from 134,000 in 1947 to about 78,000 in 1949, and a decree from April 21, 1948, subjected crafts to central planning.
The "domiar" (additional tax) was a purely discretionary tax, imposed beyond what was indicated in the books. The minutes from a meeting at the Warsaw Medical Chamber on November 13, 1946, describe the mechanism literally: incomes determined by the tax office were sometimes several times higher than declared, the tax – higher than the income, and tools of trade were seized the very next day after the decision was issued. The same logic extended to raw materials: in 1948, the state took over the Silk Station in Milanówek, and Henryk Witaczek was arrested.
Clothing became a political issue. The uniform of the "bikiniarze" (teddy boys) consisted of a wide "kilowatt" jacket, narrow trousers, "lard" shoes, and a colorful tie – the name, as Leopold Tyrmand notes in "Diary 1954," came from ties depicting an atomic bomb explosion on Bikini Atoll. In November 1951, a show "bikiniarze trial" took place: two were sentenced to death, commuted to life imprisonment.
Yet the needle survived. In July 1945, Tadeusz Zaremba resumed operations at Aleje Jerozolimskie 17, from 1956 at number 27, then at Nowogrodzka 15. His clients included the Old Gentlemen's Cabaret, Zbigniew Herbert, musicians of the National Philharmonic, and Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz. In the late 1970s, the workshop sewed costumes for a Polish-British series about Sherlock Holmes. The guild house was also rebuilt: the tenement house at Krakowskie Przedmieście 41, destroyed in 1944, was re-erected between 1947 and 1949.
VIII. WHAT REMAINS: TWELVE WORKSHOPS
The Guild of Tailors and Textile Crafts still operates, at the same address as since 1738. After 1989, compulsory membership was abolished; in 2014, the guild received the Award of the Capital City of Warsaw. The list of affiliated establishments published by the guild contains twelve entries. Three of them define their specialty as "heavy bespoke women's and men's tailoring," which is exactly what this chapter is about: Tadeusz Kierepka at Śniadeckich 1/15, Józef Błoński at Piwna 6/8/10, and Kazimierz Łomża at Wołoska 52. The rest are light tailoring, alterations, corsetry, and hat-making.
The Zaremba company survived everything: ready-to-wear, Pawiak, fire, uprising, additional taxes, and transformation. Today it is located at Wiejska 17. After Adam Zaremba's death in 2005, it is run by his widow Grażyna and son Maciej Zaremba (born 1981) – the fourth generation in the same craft; master tailors and cutters Marian Kowalczyk and Jan Sułecki worked at the table. In 2009, the owners formed a company with Piotr Kamiński, one of the few specialists in bespoke tailoring in Poland. This is the only Kamiński who can be honestly placed at the cutting table in this story – and he started in the 21st century. The one from the title drew the eagle.
"As for the workshop itself, the technology is the same as 100 years ago. Well, except that the machine is powered by an electric motor and not by the tailor's foot."
MACIEJ ZAREMBA, ZAREMBA TAILORING WORKSHOP — INTERVIEW BY KONRAD BAGIŃSKI, "INNPOLAND", FEBRUARY 4, 2017
LESSON FROM WARSAW STYLE: THE FORM IS WITHIN
Everything that determines how a garment sits after a year of wear is invisible from the outside. The construction is underneath: a layer that works, or glue that's waiting to come off. On a hanger, it looks identical. After twenty washes, the difference is total.
We don't sew suits and we don't pretend to run a bespoke workshop. We take one principle from it and apply it to knitwear: what needs to hold must be sewn, not glued. Bartack where the first tear appears. Stitch suited to the load. No fillers pretending to be construction. After a year, the item should look used, not broken – these are two different states.
HARD FACTS (HISTORICAL DOCUMENTATION)
Was Zygmunt Kamiński a tailor from Bracka Street?
No. Zygmunt Kamiński (1888–1969) was a graphic designer, painter, and professor at the Warsaw University of Technology, co-founder and three-time dean of the Faculty of Architecture, author of the current design of the Polish emblem from 1927, and of the 20 and 50 zł banknotes of the Bank of Poland. He did not run a tailoring workshop. Bracka 18 is the Kiersnowski tenement house, where schools were located before the war - including a boys' gymnasium and an elementary school for the successors of L. Lorentz. The only tailor named Kamiński associated with Warsaw bespoke tailoring is the contemporary master Piotr Kamiński, a partner in the Zaremba workshop since 2009.
Who was truly the elite of men's tailoring in interwar Warsaw?
The Zaremba workshop, founded in 1894 by Edward Zaremba (1872–1931) in the Grand Theatre building. Adolf Zaremba (1898–1969) opened a workshop at Hoża 6 in 1922 and at Wspólna 36 in 1927; he employed 15 journeymen, 2 cutters, an accountant, and a courier. The "Bracia Zaremba" firm was the most expensive men's suit workshop in Warsaw during the interwar period. Tadeusz Zaremba (1911–1998) ran his own workshop at Koszykowa 52 from 1933, and then a salon at Koszykowa 40. The luxury ready-to-wear segment was held by Bogusław Herse Fashion House on Marszałkowska and Jabłkowski Brothers Department Store on Bracka 25.
What is full canvas construction and horsehair canvas?
Full canvas is a glueless method of jacket construction: a loose layer of canvas and horsehair canvas – a fabric with horsehair weft and wool, cotton, linen, or synthetic fiber warp – are fitted between the outer fabric and the lining. The layers are joined with hand-stitched padding stitches. Horsehair is resilient and returns to its shape, allowing the form to rebuild after every movement. In the fused version, the entire front is heat-sealed with fusible interlining – cheap and quick, but detachment of the layer results in irreparable bubbles. An intermediate variant is half canvas: canvas in the chest and lapel areas, glue below.
What happened to Warsaw tailoring during the occupation?
From mid-1941, German entrepreneurs took over and merged small Jewish workshops into so-called "shops"; the largest belonged to Walther Többens (textile) and Fritz Schultz (furrier). At their peak, they employed about 40,000 Jews, and workers paid for their workspace with their own sewing machines. On August 24, 1942, the Arbeitsamt limited employment to 30,000; during one "blockade" in the shop at Prosta Street, 3,600 people were deported to their deaths. In May 1943, Többens moved 10,000 workers to Poniatowa, and Schultz moved 6,000 to Trawniki – all murdered on November 3, 1943, in Operation "Erntefest". Polish workshops paid separately: Adolf Zaremba was sent to Pawiak in 1940, and Zygmunt Zaremba was executed in 1943.
How much did clothes cost in pre-war Poland?
According to "Price Statistics 1937" (series C, fascicle 96, Warsaw 1938), a white men's shirt cost 9.50 zł, and a pair of factory-made men's ankle boots cost 24.66 zł. Monthly earnings according to "Small Statistical Yearbook" of the Central Statistical Office: industrial worker 102.77 zł (1935), female worker 53.32 zł, white-collar worker 280.50 zł, teacher about 200 zł, lieutenant 324 zł, judge from 425 zł. Bespoke clothing was many times the price of ready-to-wear – hence the common practice of altering, mending, and inheriting clothes. Specific price lists of Warsaw tailoring workshops from the 1930s are not source-confirmed and should not be quoted.
0 comments