In the heart of Poland’s cultural landscape, a designer emerges whose creations are less garments than living sculptures. Ewa Zbaraszewska forges a singular path where art, architecture, and sustainable fashion converge into wearable poetry. Her work is a lucid testament to a female vision that does not ask for permission, but rather commands attention with quiet audacity and undeniable grace.
“Design is pure creation,” she says—insisting that what others might label as “difficulty” is, for her, pure fulfillment. “The creative process… begins with a vision… a concrete form appearing to me in my imagination. It’s an incredibly powerful and exciting feeling…!”
Ewa’s inspiration flows directly from the built environments that shaped her youth. She grew up in Stalowa Wola, a city born in the crucible of early modernism, where facades bear the austere elegance of prewar design and interiors hum with Art Déco’s refined lines. This heritage unfurls in her collections as a dialogue between structure and fabric. In her hands, fabric becomes a three-dimensional sculpture: a piece’s silhouette is conceived like a façade, its folds and lines echoing the geometry of the city blocks that surrounded her as a child.
“I grew up in the city center, in a district with high architectural value,” she recalls. “Every day I encountered and admired modernist architecture and its characteristic elements.” The view from her room was toward the pre-war Hotel Hutnik, built in the Art Déco style—whose shape, she notes, drew inspiration from a deep-sea ship. Even the street near her home and boutique—Art Moda “Polscy Projektanci,” with its distinctive clinker used as a finishing element on the façade—feels like part of her design grammar: in May, it blooms with pink hawthorn flowers.
“There are many such places in Stalowa Wola… you can truly fall in love with this city,” she adds. Undoubtedly, these surroundings cultivated her sense of beauty and harmony. “I also come from an artistic family,” she says, “and my grandfather was an architect—so a love of architecture was passed down to me.”
Her dialogue with modernism arrives through a particular constellation of influences: Kazimir Malevich’s austere geometry and Tamara de Lempicka’s sovereign poise. She speaks of a color philosophy born from an intimate need to illuminate the skin with tone that flatters and enlivens. In her words, the black square on white—a stark emblem of Suprematist purity—resonates as a metaphor for form in her design language: minimal, decisive, and eternally contemporary. Yet she does not stop there. Her collections traverse the same arc that Modernism touched: from the flat plane to a body-engaged silhouette, from linear restraint to fluid motion—what she terms the translation of architectural energy into textile form.
Beyond beauty, sustainability anchors Ewa’s practice. Her approach eschews disposable glamour in favor of lasting, thoughtfully sourced materials. She champions natural fibers and blends with significant natural content, underscoring a belief that fashion must serve human well-being and planetary health. Her stance on textiles is exacting: wool—often with a gentle domestic blend—offers warmth, resilience, and drape that a garment can live in for years. She rejects fashion’s throwaway culture in favor of a wardrobe where each piece is designed to endure and to adapt across seasons and contexts. This ethical framework is not a trend but a core conviction that shapes every collection.
Ewa’s work has also earned her a stage beyond local studios, because it is driven by relationships as much as by form. In her words, what matters is not only the garment, but the living conversation around it. “In my work, I truly value contact with my clients.” She describes those connections as deeply inspiring—because “it’s precisely such women who come to me.” Her clients, in her telling, are not passive recipients but co-authors of the story her clothes bring to life.
She recounts a moment when she designed a first dress for her award-winning Art Déco collection with her friend in mind. She waited for her opinion—and discovered the plan had shifted into something unforgettable: “she decided to wear it during her son’s wedding.” Such episodes, she admits, create an emotional momentum that makes the work feel effortless. “Situations like this give me a real ‘wind at my back’… and my work? I don’t feel like I’m working at all—it’s pure pleasure!”
In the way she builds collections, Ewa also stays faithful to the women she designs for—confident, intentional, and brave enough to wear their identity. “My collections are chosen by extraordinary women—confident in their strengths, aware, incredibly brave, and stylish.”
Ewa’s work has earned her a place on international platforms, including representing Poland at Expo Roma 2023, the showcase for sustainable fashion. Her bold outerwear has captivated audiences during Fashion Weeks in Milan, Rome, Berlin, and Poland, culminating in the International Excellence award for her “Art Déco” collection at a recent International Fashion Week in Conversano, Italy. Yet her roots remain grounded in the Podkarpacie region and Stalowa Wola, where she leads the Art & Moda foundation—a hub for enthusiasts of Art Déco and Modernist styles—organizing an annual Art Déco festival with the city council.
Locally, Ewa operates the Art Moda boutique in Stalowa Wola, a space that embodies her ethos: a direct, intimate relationship with clients, built on conversation, mentorship, and a shared appreciation for craftsmanship. Her dedication to boutique experience reflects a broader belief that fashion should not only clothe but also educate and empower.
Gently, inevitably, her attention returns to women as a central theme—not as decoration, but as agency. The clientele she cherishes includes remarkable women who are icons in their fields: artists, performers, and leaders who embody strength, autonomy, and elegance. For Ewa, clothing is a conduit for expressing autonomy, dignity, and a conscious identity.
When asked what art means to her, Ewa speaks of it as a fundamental channel of wonder and an inexhaustible source of inspiration. She traces her devotion to contemporary couture to a modernist lineage, one that prizes clarity of form, the bold synthesis of materials, and a fearless approach to color. Her work is not about chasing ephemeral trends but about capturing the essence of a moment—the moment when architecture translates into the language of the body, when cloth embodies the cadence of a city, and when a coat or a cape becomes a portable monument.
Ewa Zbaraszewska’s story is a reminder that design can be a disciplined, generous, and liberating practice. Her unwavering commitment to sustainable materials, her reverence for architectural geometry, and her celebration of women’s agency create a compelling blueprint for 21st-century fashion. She invites us to view clothing as architecture for the body—an elegant, functional, and enduring art form.
Photo credits: Małgorzata Giebułtowicz, Artur Michelis, Krystian Marut, Alessandra Gitto, Rafael Poschmann, Klaus Brossler, Przemysław Grochowski, Tomasz Urbaniak.
Marina Abramović wears Ewa’s coat on the first pictures, first row
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