Krystyna Spark

Krystyna completed her dissertation on the V&A/RCA History of Design MA Programme in April 2021. The study portrayed how information about current trends in dress was transmitted between Poland and the West throughout the 1960s. Contemporary printed magazines as well as oral testimonies were used as the main primary sources, which gave the research a unique, at times personal, character.

Dissertation Title: "Barbara Hoff’s Fashion Column: Examining the Connection Between Fashion in Communist Poland and the West, 1954 – 1974"

Word Count: 18,102 words 

Abstract:

The influence of England’s capital was felt across the globe, yet behind the Iron Curtain admitting this was problematic. Through the lens of fashion this dissertation attempts to portray how information about current trends in dress were transmitted between Poland and the West throughout the 1960s.

Using contemporary printed magazines as main primary sources and, in particular, Polish designer Barbara Hoff’s fashion column written for Przekrój magazine as a case study, this dissertation illustrates the way in which public desire for Western fashion trends was swayed and manipulated by Poland’s Communist government. The research draws attention to similarities between the clothing designed in Poland and that outside of the confines of a centrally steered economy. Noticing these connections raises the question of design innovation and brings to the forefront Polish designers whose work was not previously placed on an equal level to those from the West.

A comparison of popular press to internal trade documentation reveals the potential of Poland’s fashion industry and argues that it was the fault of the regime that it was not fully realised. These limitations of surroundings, in which fashion designers working in Poland during the 1960s operated, are perceived by the author not as factors necessarily hindering their creative output, but rather, as circumstances which allowed for a different kind of creativity. In conclusion, this dissertation argues, the intertwined structure of governmental trade institutions has made it almost impossible to judge the legacy of Poland’s Communist-era fashion in the same way as it is in the West.