Kraków Loves Fashion and Design

Fashion and design are hot topics, so we have great news: in 2016, there will be plenty happening in Kraków! Very soon, on 7 February, the Cracow School of Art and Fashion Design (SAPU) hosts the Junk Fashion Show at the Nowa Huta Cultural Centre. Students of this prestigious institution present clothes made of recycled materials, in particular paper. The event forms a part of the Eco Fashion Weekend, during which SAPU present workshops and lectures combining the themes of fashion and design with ecology. Spring with haute couture March belongs to the largest fashion event of Kraków and Małopolska: the Cracow Fashion Week, co-organised by SAPU. It kicks off on 6 March with a competition for Polish designers, and a show of graduation works by SAPU students: the Cracow Fashion Awards. The young artists’ designs are assessed by great personalities from the fashion world, including Dorota Wróblewska, Michał Zaczyński, Ranita Sobańska, Lidia Popiel and Tobiasz Kujawa. We’ll also see collections of young talents from Germany, Ukraine and Hungary. Cracow Fashion Week closes on 12 March, and the programme also includes many workshops and lectures. It’s also worth visiting two exhibitions presenting the artistic dimension of the world of fashion, following the motto “fashion, art, education”. As part of the SAPU Creative 1995-2015 the Museum of Municipal Engineering presents clothes designed by the school’s acclaimed graduates. In the centre of Kraków, Szczepański Square hosts a fashion photography exhibition Focus on Fashion: Only One, featuring works by Lidia Popiel and Aldona Kaczmarczyk alongside young, talented graduates of the Creative Photography School. And let’s not forget that until 17 April, the Main Building of the National Museum in Krakow hosts the exhibition FASHIONable in Communist Poland. We’ll be able to see designs by the finest creators of Polish fashion from the period, including Jerzy Antkowiak, Barbara Hoff and Grażyna Hase. And there will also be cycles of meetings and workshops held throughout the exhibition. Culture and business The POLIKULTURA Culture and Media Festival (20-22 May), organised by the Cultural Institute of the Jagiellonian University and the Krok Dalej Association, presents an exhibition of fashion photography in Kraków’s Zabłocie district. We will also see Michał Toczek’s film largely inspired by the leitmotif of the Cracow Fashion Week 2015 “Fashion is more than clothes”. In late May and early June, we present a brand new event: the Art Business Festival, organised by the Student Forum Business Centre Club in Kraków. Guests are invited to participate in lectures and workshops introducing fashion and photography as a business in which artistic foundations and financial and marketing considerations play an equal role. In early June, we will see designs by young, talented artists. The SAPU Fashion Laboratory shows how to creatively manipulate art in the fashion world. The weekend hosts many workshops and lectures, culminating with a fashion show on 5 June at the unique space of Forum Przestrzenie. On 11 and 12 June, come along to the 10th Interior Design Festival, organised by the Virtus Studio at the Chemobudowa Fair Centre. It provides a platform linking the worlds of producers, architects and designers of applied art with the public. The programme includes lectures, workshops, advice from architects and exhibitions. Virtus also holds design and architecture conferences on 20 April and 27 September. The Łobzowska Studio once again invites guests to an event under the banner Łobzowska Studio Fashion Day (late June and early July). Events from the world of fashion photography await, as does a fashion show. In October, come long to the birthday exhibition of the studio’s design at Łobzowska Street. Meetings and fairs A major design and interior decoration event awaits in the autumn. The third Kraków Design Festival, organised by the School of Interior and Spatial Design, is held between 18 and 20 November. During the three days there will be lectures from top designers, workshops and discussions, while on Sunday 20 November it’s worth heading to the old tram depot for the Design Fair, presenting works by around a hundred Polish designers, artisans and artists. And there’s good news for fans of Polish fashion. Kraków hosts two fairs which had already attracted huge crowds in 2015: Kiermash and the Crack Fashion Festival. “We don’t want to slow down the pace in 2016,” says Izabela Chyłek from Kiermash. “We have prepared something big for spring and something big for autumn. We aim to join forces with existing initiatives and create smaller events. We hope to present our exhibitors to the wider public.” The Crack Fashion Festival will most likely be held in April at ICE Kraków Congress Centre; the venue also hosted last year’s festival. The event aims to showcase dozens of Polish designers and clothes manufacturers, including acclaimed premium brands. Expand your knowledge! Kraków regularly hosts fashion and design workshops. The former are organised by the Fashion College of the Cracow School of Art and Fashion Design (some classes are in English), while the Slow Fashion Café in Kazimierz is the perfect venue for improving your sewing, dressmaking and fashion illustration skills. The Design Forum showroom at the former Forum Hotel hosts regular design-themed events. In January, you can learn more about ceramics, in February there’s an exhibition of photos taken by Anna Osik during an audit of factories in India and Bangladesh, and in May the venue hosts a poster fair. The Fashion Forum showroom presents children’s fashion shows and film screenings (in winter), as well as meetings with fashion personalities and vernissages of exhibitions by artists from the Academy of Fine Arts (in spring). The sheer number of events show that fashion and design are growing rapidly. And they are becoming an important part of Kraków – Poland’s cultural capital. Rafał Stanowski – publicist, trendwatcher, promoter of fashion and design events