The studio in the 11th arrondissement smells of steam and wool

The studio in the 11th arrondissement smells of steam and wool. Zuzanna Walczak stands at the cutting table, pinning a sleeve head into a coat that will not be photographed for another six months. She is talking about her grandmother, a seamstress in Łódź who kept a photograph of Halston's studio pinned above her machine. Not for inspiration—Walczak is careful about that word—but as evidence that a certain kind of precision could travel.

ZUZWA, the Paris-based house Walczak founded in 2019, has built its reputation on structure that doesn't announce itself. The silhouette is narrow through the body, released at the hem. The palette runs from ivory to charcoal with occasional breaks into rust or petrol blue. What distinguishes the work is not novelty but a kind of architectural clarity, the sense that each piece has been drawn in plan and elevation before the first toile was cut.

But that clarity, Walczak will tell you, came from three women who had nothing to do with fashion.

The Grandmother

Janina Walczak worked in a state textile factory until 1989, then took in alterations at home. She did not sketch. She did not drape. She took measurements with a fabric tape that had lost its first ten centimetres, adjusted every figure in her head, and delivered garments that fit.

"She taught me that fitting is a negotiation," Walczak says. "Not between designer and client, but between the body and the cloth. You can't bully either one."

Walczak spent summers in Łódź as a child, watching her grandmother dismantle suit jackets to harvest the lining, the pocketing, the horsehair canvas that could be reused. Nothing was wasted. A sleeve head was a geometry problem. A lapel roll was a function of tension and grain.

That training shows in ZUZWA's construction. The house works primarily in natural fibres—wool crepe, linen, silk noil—and builds structure through layering rather than fusing. A coat from the autumn 2023 collection uses three weights of wool: a 10oz gabardine shell, a 6oz flannel interlining, and a silk-wool blend for the lining. The result is a garment that holds its shape without stiffness, that moves when you move and stops when you stop.

Janina Walczak died in 2017. Her granddaughter keeps the photograph of Halston's studio in her own workspace now, next to a postcard of a Balenciaga sleeve from 1955.

The Professor

Krystyna Konecka taught pattern cutting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw for thirty-two years. She did not believe in draping. She did not believe in ease. She believed in the flat pattern as a form of technical drawing, and she expected her students to produce blocks that required no adjustment at the toile stage.

Walczak studied under Konecka from 2009 to 2011, during a brief return to Poland after an unsatisfying year at Central Saint Martins. The pedagogy was Soviet in its rigour. A bodice block was drafted in four hours or not at all. A sleeve required fourteen measurements. Konecka would check each draft with a ruler and reject anything more than two millimetres off the mark.

"She made me understand that creativity is not the opposite of discipline," Walczak says. "It's what happens when discipline becomes invisible."

That philosophy defines ZUZWA's development process. Each collection begins with technical drawings, not sketches. Walczak drafts the patterns herself, working in increments of five millimetres. The first toile is made in muslin, the second in a fabric that matches the weight and drape of the final cloth. Adjustments are noted in a ledger that now runs to three volumes.

The spring 2024 collection featured a shirt with a collar that stood without stays. The pattern required eleven iterations. The collar band was cut on the bias, the stand on the straight grain. The interline was a lightweight linen that had been washed three times to soften the hand. When the shirt was finished, the collar held its shape through a full day of wear and returned to its original line overnight.

Konecka retired in 2019. She has not seen ZUZWA's work, but Walczak sends her photographs after each collection. The responses are brief, technical, occasionally approving.

The Client

Marta Dzido is a translator who lives in Kraków. She is sixty-one. She owns seven pieces from ZUZWA, all purchased at full price, all worn until the cloth shows its age.

Walczak met her in 2020, during a trunk show at a small boutique in the Kazimierz district. Dzido tried on a wool coat, asked about the weight of the cloth, the origin of the buttons, the width of the seam allowance. She bought the coat and wore it out of the shop.

"She asked the questions I wanted clients to ask," Walczak says. "Not about the concept or the inspiration, but about how the thing was made."

Dzido has become an informal sounding board. Walczak sends her samples, asks whether a hem length works, whether a sleeve feels balanced. Dzido responds with the same precision she brings to her translations: specific, unsentimental, exact.

The autumn 2024 collection includes a dress in charcoal wool crepe, cut with a high neckline and a skirt that falls to mid-calf. The prototype had a side seam that pulled slightly at the hip. Walczak sent a photograph to Dzido, who suggested letting out the seam by one centimetre and shifting the waist dart forward by five millimetres. The adjustment worked.

"She understands that a garment is a tool," Walczak says. "It has to perform."

What Comes Next

ZUZWA will show its spring 2025 collection in March. The palette is lighter than usual—chalk, sand, a pale grey-blue—but the construction remains uncompromising. There is a coat in linen canvas, unlined, with a sleeve head that took four weeks to perfect. There is a shirt in cotton poplin with a bib front that uses no topstitching, only hand-felling.

Walczak is not interested in scaling. The house produces roughly two hundred pieces per season, all made in a single atelier in the 10th arrondissement. She has no plans to expand into accessories or fragrance. She does not use the word "brand."

"I'm interested in making clothes that last," she says. "Not as investment pieces or collectibles, but as things you can wear until they wear out."

She is still in touch with Marta Dzido, who recently asked about the possibility of a tailored trouser in a wool-linen blend. Walczak is working on the pattern. Konecka has not responded to the latest photographs, but that is not unusual. Janina Walczak's tape measure, the one missing its first ten centimetres, sits in a drawer beneath the cutting table.

The sleeve head is finished. Walczak lifts the coat, checks the balance, sets it aside. There is another fitting in an hour.