The fitting room at ZUZWA's Paris atelier smells faintly of cedar and steam
The fitting room at ZUZWA's Paris atelier smells faintly of cedar and steam. Zofia Kowalska adjusts the sleeve head on a navy wool coat while her business partner, Wanda Nowak, watches from a stool near the window. The coat is unfinished—basted seams, chalk marks still visible along the lapel—but the shape is already there. A high armhole. A narrow shoulder that doesn't rely on padding. The kind of cut that looks like nothing on the hanger and everything on the body.
This has been the rhythm since 2011, when the two women opened a workshop above a café in the 11th arrondissement with three sewing machines and a loan from Kowalska's uncle. ZUZWA—a portmanteau of their grandmothers' names—began as a made-to-measure service for men who wanted Polish tailoring without flying to Kraków. Thirteen years later, it is a maison with two Paris locations, a seasonal ready-to-wear line, and a waiting list that stretches into next autumn.
But the house has changed. Nowak stepped back from daily operations in 2022 to focus on sourcing and supplier relationships. Kowalska now oversees design and production alone, a shift that has altered both the pace and the output. The question is whether ZUZWA can grow without losing the thing that made it worth noticing in the first place.
Training and the Warsaw years
Kowalska trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, though not in fashion. She studied sculpture, which explains the way she talks about garments: as objects with mass and balance, not illustrations. Nowak came from a different direction. Her mother ran a small tailoring business in Gdańsk, making suits for local officials and wedding guests. Nowak spent her teens learning to set sleeves and press seams, skills she later formalised with an apprenticeship at a workroom in Kraków.
The two met in 2009 at a textile trade show in Milan. Kowalska was there looking for wool suppliers; Nowak was scouting on behalf of her mother's atelier. They stayed in touch, and when Kowalska decided to leave Warsaw for Paris, Nowak followed six months later. The plan was to work for established tailors and learn the French system. Instead, they found themselves priced out of most apprenticeships—too old, too foreign, too expensive to train.
ZUZWA was the fallback. They rented the space above the café, bought fabric from a mill in Biella on credit, and started taking orders. Early clients were mostly Polish expats and a few Frenchmen who had heard about the workshop through word of mouth. The work was traditional: two-piece suits in mid-weight worsteds, trousers with side-adjusters, the occasional overcoat. Nothing revolutionary, but everything made properly.
The breakthrough, such as it was
ZUZWA did not have a breakout moment. There was no celebrity endorsement, no viral campaign, no appearance at Paris Fashion Week. Growth came slowly, through clients who returned and brought others with them. By 2015, the workshop had expanded to a second room and hired two full-time tailors. By 2018, they had opened a small shopfront in the Marais and introduced a ready-to-wear line alongside the bespoke service.
The ready-to-wear was an adjustment. Kowalska had to learn how to grade patterns for multiple sizes, a process that required more compromise than she was comfortable with. The first collection—six jackets, four trousers, two overcoats—sold unevenly. Some pieces moved quickly; others sat on the rack for months. But the exercise clarified what worked. The house's strength was in outerwear and unstructured tailoring. Anything that required a rigid silhouette or heavy canvas felt like a concession.
The signature ZUZWA piece, if there is one, is the unlined wool jacket. It uses a 10oz hopsack or fresco, cut with a soft shoulder and a slightly extended body. No padding, no fusing, just cloth and a clean make. The jacket behaves differently depending on how you wear it—over a shirt, it sits close; over a knit, it opens and drapes. Kowalska describes it as a garment that adapts rather than dictates, which sounds like marketing until you try one on.
What remains
Nowak's partial departure in 2022 was not acrimonious, but it was felt. She had been the one managing supplier relationships, negotiating prices, and ensuring that fabric orders arrived on time. Kowalska took over those responsibilities while continuing to design and oversee production, a workload that has slowed the house's output. The autumn 2023 collection was smaller than previous seasons—four jackets, three trousers, one coat—and the spring 2024 line has been delayed.
There is also the question of scale. ZUZWA now employs seven people, including two pattern cutters and three tailors. The Marais shop remains open, and a second location opened in the 8th arrondissement in 2023, but the bespoke side of the business has contracted. Kowalska no longer takes new made-to-measure clients unless they are referred by existing customers, a decision that has frustrated some and relieved others. The ready-to-wear line is where the focus has shifted, though Kowalska insists that the process has not changed. Each piece is still cut and assembled in the Paris atelier, and the house still works with the same mills in Biella and Huddersfield.
But something has shifted. The early ZUZWA garments had a certain roughness—visible hand-stitching, uneven hems, the occasional puckered seam. These were not flaws so much as evidence of process, markers of a small workshop working at the edge of its capacity. The newer pieces are cleaner, more consistent, and arguably less interesting. Kowalska acknowledges this without apology. The house is better at what it does now, she says, even if that means losing some of the improvisation.
What comes next
Kowalska is forty-three. Nowak is forty-six. Neither has children, and neither has indicated plans to step away entirely, but succession is a question that hovers. ZUZWA is not a brand that can be sold to a conglomerate without losing its identity, and it is not large enough to sustain itself without the founders' involvement. The house exists in an uncomfortable middle ground—too established to be a scrappy upstart, too small to be a secure institution.
For now, the plan is to continue as they are. Kowalska is working on the autumn 2024 collection, which will include a return to heavier cloth—14oz worsteds and a charcoal melton overcoat. Nowak remains involved in sourcing and occasionally consults on fit. The Marais shop still smells faintly of cedar and steam. The house endures, for however long enduring is enough.
