Paulina Plizga collections reflect what is happening on the streets of Paris and France, where Arab influences meet hooker chic, she designed a chador to be worn with a little black number
Creating the Textile Palimpsest
Paulina Plizga, C Peekaboo 2012, courtesy of Paulina Plizga
Paulina Plizga is a self-taught fashion expert. This former au pair and concierge would buy period ball gowns and take them apart to understand the art of putting a dress together.
The hard work paid off. She has since gone on to display her designs in Paris, New York, Los Angeles and London to critical acclaim. Born in in 1971 in Silesia, Plizga studied at the State School of Art in Krakow before moving to Paris in 1992. It was here she began to take in an interest in haute couture and creations by the latest avant-garde fashion designers.
Her first fashion show took place at the Place des Vosges. The designs combined historical elements with punk and minimalism. “The collection could be described as trash meets used clothing. It contained all of my trademark elements: patchwork, frayed edges, combinations of unusual materials. All of these things I have continued to use over the years. The collection also featured really theatrical crinoline dresses.” said Plizga in an interview with K MAG magazine.
Throughout the 1990s, Paulina Plizga’s designs were on display at Corps et Ames, a Paris showroom for young designers. She sold work at La Botica, Les Créatures and 404 in Paris, Fragile in New York, Five Figures in Los Angeles, and Sample Sale on London’s Brick Lane amongst others.
In 2003, she began collaborating with the ysh shop in Tokyo’s Laforet shopping centre and two years later she moved her studio from Montmartre to the lobby of the Laforet, where the public could watch her working. She has since created similar projects in Berlin, Vienna and Edinburgh.
Most of Plizga’s creations are one-of-a-kind or limited supply, and the designer views their very creation as an artistic endeavour. During her shows, Plizga often designs and produces her clothing in front of an audience, making the sewing and design process into a dynamic performance. Her painstaking process of combining elegant materials, many of which are second-hand, to create unique fabrics only intensifies the artistry of her designs. Symbolic destruction always precedes the process of creation, and the result is a textile palimpsest bursting with memories and emotion.
Despite their obvious aesthetic appeal Paulina Plizga’s clothes are entirely functional. Her collections reflect what is happening on the streets of Paris, where Arab influences meet hooker chic, she designed a chador to be worn with a little black number. Plizga’s s/s2013 collection featured corseted models strutting down the catwalk eating french fries, contemporary Paris’s culinary must-have, wrapped in pages torn from Elle Magazine.
Paulina Plizga draws inspiration from a large number of artists, including Magdalena Abakanowicz and Władysław Hasior, two Polish sculptors with an interest in the symbolism of material. In 2008, Paulina Plizga developed her very own patchwork technique, called “Nest”. Unveiled at the Korczyński Polish Concept Store in Paris, the technique was inspired by the old Japanese legend of Tsuru no Ongaeshi, which tells the story of a crane disguised as a woman that weaves a beautiful silk brocade from its own feathers.
Since 2015 Paulina has lived and worked in Rubaix, in a former Chez Rita waffle factory which now serves as an artist commune co-operative.