Les muses de ZUZWA
The fitting room at ZUZWA's atelier in the 10th arrondissement is smaller than you expect. A single mirror leans against exposed brick. Pins in a ceramic dish. A rail with three coats, two skirts, one dress still unfinished at the hem. Zuza Wróblewska sits cross-legged on the floor, chalk in hand, marking a seam that refuses to lie flat. She is not thinking about muses. She is thinking about the weight of linen and whether this particular weave will hold a bias cut through a full day's wear.
But muses are what built the house. Not in the romantic sense—no tragic love affairs, no fevered sketches at dawn. ZUZWA's muses are three women whose lives shaped the way Wróblewska thinks about cloth, about cut, about who gets to wear what and why. They are her grandmother, a seamstress in Łódź who made wedding dresses in a two-room flat. A British war correspondent named Clare Hollingworth, who broke the story of the Second World War in a borrowed dress and a good coat. And Wróblewska herself, at sixteen, standing in a Topshop changing room in Warsaw, realising nothing fit the way she needed it to.
The grandmother
Wróblewska's grandmother, Helena, worked from a Singer machine wedged between the kitchen table and a window that faced a courtyard. She made bridal gowns for women in the neighbourhood, mostly to order, occasionally on spec. The dresses were traditional—high necks, long sleeves, heavy satin that held its shape through a full Catholic ceremony. Helena did not sketch. She draped directly on the body, pinning muslin to the bride's torso and adjusting as she went. If a seam puckered, she unpicked it. If a sleeve pulled, she recut the armhole.
Wróblewska spent weekends in that flat, watching her grandmother work. She learned that a good fitting is a negotiation. The client wants to look taller, the dress wants to pull across the back. The solution is not always obvious. Sometimes you add ease. Sometimes you remove it. Helena's rule was that the dress should feel like nothing—no tightness, no slipping, no awareness of construction. You wore it and forgot it was there.
That principle runs through ZUZWA's work. The house is known for pieces that sit close to the body without clinging, that move when you move and stop when you stop. The Spring 2023 collection featured a series of slip dresses in silk-linen blends, cut on the bias with no darts, no boning, no internal structure beyond a French seam at the side. They looked simple. They were not. Each one required three fittings and a custom pattern adjusted to the wearer's shoulder slope and ribcage width. Wróblewska does not do vanity sizing. She does not do standard blocks. Every piece is made to measurements taken in the atelier, the way Helena would have done it.
The correspondent
Clare Hollingworth died in 2017 at the age of 105. She spent most of her career in trousers, a notebook, and a Burberry trench she bought in London in 1939 and wore until it fell apart sometime in the 1960s. Wróblewska discovered her by accident, reading a profile in a British newspaper while studying at Central Saint Martins. What caught her attention was not Hollingworth's journalism—though that was formidable—but a photograph from 1940. Hollingworth in Warsaw, standing beside a bombed-out building, wearing a wool coat with a belt, a scarf knotted at the throat, and a pair of brogues caked in dust. She looked ready for anything.
Wróblewska wanted to make clothes for that woman. Not literally—Hollingworth was dead, and in any case she had no interest in fashion. But the idea of a wardrobe built for movement, for work, for a life that did not pause for a fitting or a dry cleaner, became central to ZUZWA's aesthetic. The house does not make occasion wear. It makes clothes for women who have things to do.
The signature ZUZWA trench, introduced in Autumn 2021, is a direct descendant of that photograph. It is cut in a 10oz cotton gabardine, unlined, with a single-breasted front and no epaulettes. The belt is sewn into the side seams, so it cannot be lost. The pockets are deep enough for a passport, a phone, and a paperback. It is not waterproof—Wróblewska does not believe in treating cloth with chemicals that make it stiff—but it dries fast and does not wrinkle. You can wear it over a dress or over jeans. You can wear it in Paris or in Peshawar. That is the point.
The teenager
Wróblewska at sixteen was tall, thin, and constantly cold. She wore her father's jumpers and her brother's jeans, rolled at the ankle because nothing came long enough. She shopped in Zara and H&M and Topshop, looking for trousers that fit her waist and her inseam, and found neither. The waist was always too loose. The inseam was always too short. She tried men's trousers, which fit the length but gaped at the hip. She tried buying a size up and taking them to a tailor, but the proportions were wrong—too much fabric in the thigh, not enough room in the rise.
The problem was not her body. The problem was the pattern. High street brands cut for an average that does not exist, a standardised woman with standardised proportions. If you are taller, shorter, wider, narrower, you make do. You buy what fits best and live with the rest.
Wróblewska decided not to live with it. She enrolled in a pattern-cutting course in Warsaw, then applied to Central Saint Martins, then spent two years working in a Savile Row atelier, learning how to draft a trouser block from scratch. She learned that a good pattern accounts for the body's asymmetry—one hip higher than the other, one leg slightly longer. She learned that cloth has a memory, that it stretches and shrinks and settles over time. She learned that the only way to make something that fits is to make it for one person, not for a demographic.
ZUZWA launched in 2019 with a collection of six pieces: two trousers, two skirts, a shirt, and a coat. All were made to measure. All were cut in natural fibres—linen, wool, cotton—that could be washed, worn, and repaired. The atelier operated by appointment only. Clients came in for an initial consultation, a fitting four weeks later, and a final adjustment before the piece was finished. The process took two months. The price reflected the labour.
It still does. ZUZWA is not a high street brand. It is not trying to be. Wróblewska makes roughly 200 pieces a year, all in the Paris atelier, all by hand. She employs four seamstresses, a pattern cutter, and an assistant who handles fittings when Wróblewska is travelling. The waiting list is six months. She is not interested in scaling.
What comes next
Wróblewska is considering a shirt. Not a blouse—she dislikes the word, dislikes the connotations of something decorative, something that needs ironing. A shirt. Cut like a man's shirt, in a cotton poplin or a linen oxford, with a straight hem that can be tucked or left out. She has been draping samples for three months and is not satisfied. The shoulder is too wide. The cuff is too tight. The collar does not sit flat when the top button is undone.
She will figure it out. She always does. The muses are still there—Helena at the Singer, Hollingworth in the trench, the sixteen-year-old in the changing room. They are not romantic. They are not idealised. They are women who needed clothes that worked, and who made do when they could not find them. Wróblewska is still making do. The difference is that now she knows how to cut the pattern herself.
