How Alexandra Armata unpicked her Polish heritage with her MA collection

“It was the mass-production side of fashion. But my end goal was always to do my Master’s degree at Central Saint Martins.”

Raised into a Polish family, Armata – the first to be born outside of Poland – wasn’t going to comply. After a short stint in business school she dropped out, joining the BA in Design at Ryerson University in Toronto, where she quickly grew to learn the technical margins of the industry from production design, technical draping, illustration and schematics for factories. “It was the mass-production side of fashion. But my end goal was always to do my Master’s degree at Central Saint Martins.”

Pitching herself the target, Armata secured a place at London College of Fashion’s Graduate Diploma course in Fashion Design Technology, followed by working with Vejas Kruszewski for almost a year, before reaching the doors of 1 Granary Square. It was from here that she began exploring the stories behind her own heritage; a Soviet Poland where a Communist regime dramatically influenced the fashion of the time, emphasising values of comfortable and practical workwear for the proletariat. “The approach to art and crafts was very humble and modest during the Soviet era, but at the same time had to be very utilitarian. My research began by looking at more domestic textiles like curtains and tablecloths – things with a lot of texture. But I’m not a very textile-oriented person, so I ended up finding all the textures and colours really confusing and impossible to work with.”

“My dad initially taught me how to sew because he had to learn how to fix his own clothes.”

The pivoting research process led Armata to source personal photos of her family during the bureaucratic era from the ‘60s to ‘80s, but what piqued her interest most was the influence of politics on dress. “Particularly from censorship due to the restrictions on importing and exporting, the clothing options were incredibly limited and specific. Let’s say for wedding dresses you had to have family from abroad or some kind of contact just to send you fabric, or secret shipments sent in. It’s such a contrast to the hyperconsumerism of today with how disposable everything is. People really took care of their clothes. I even remember growing up as a kid, I’d toss something on the floor and my parents would get really upset because they’d see it as disrespecting your hard work. The way people treated clothes back then was so much more intimate and honest. Most people knew how to sew more back then, at least a button or some seams. My dad initially taught me how to sew because he had to learn how to fix his own clothes.”

This tender relationship manifested into ‘Identitat’, Armata’s final MA collection. “When you speak two languages, a lot of the time in one language there’s a term that’s missing from the vocabulary, so you make it up. I took an English word and made it sound more Polish.” While pragmatic in approach, from tailored suits, fleece waistcoats and pleated ankle-length skirts, Armata pays tribute to her ancestors through intricate doodles, achieved by posca pens and embroidery, on crisp white shirts. “I came across a book where someone had decorated in a particular way with lines that weren’t perfectly straight and it caught my eye. Then that summer before my MA started, my dad and I went to visit my grandparents farm in Poland. I’d taken a ton of photos and then I ended up using little logos and images from the photos. I just opened up my phone and started doodling them. It was by accident really, but then I started adding lots of personal references of things my parents would say to me like ‘don’t make me angry’ in a jokey voice, and all of our private jokes.” Purposefully using the cheapest materials possible, for the reflection of quality over cost, Armata fostered a collection that was ‘innocent and authentic’, reflecting the temperament of the times, where clothing was functional and low priority, rather than expressive and desired.

Spanning old-school Eastern European traditions and a liberal Canada, Western references surface through the inclusion of the ‘Canadian tuxedo’ – a colloquial term for a denim-on-denim suit – to reversed dresses where the seam falls on the front of the garment, “a reference to the Amish community in Canada that I’d often run into in Walmart.” While her Western influences are astute, Armata wanted her Polish heritage to take precedence, “It’s the amusement behind it, or the respect rather. It’s just such a different approach to dressing,” she shares. Yet, in the early development of Armata’s toiles resulted in a sequence of mistakes turned to miracles. “Things would shift awkwardly, I’d cut something on the wrong grain. For instance, the tailored jacket was made almost completely by mistake. I didn’t have a facing on the inside so the lining was bagging out like a balloon because I mismeasured it. Something that looked so horrible became incredibly interesting.”

“One day, I’d love my own brand but having that requires a really big initial investment which is not easy.”

Defining the mood as ‘hardcore normcore’, the designer is now experiencing first-hand a modern day intersection between politics and fashion, entering the industry as a young designer in a notoriously difficult job market, hit by a pandemic and under moral realignment. She’s got faith though. “My cohort, just finishing school, are going to tackle it quickly and very well. It’s a big concern of ours” What comes next? “One day, I’d love my own brand but having that requires a really big initial investment which is not easy. I’ve worked for a few start-ups, so I’d like to work for a larger luxury brand to see how it operates with a whole team of designers rather than a small room with a couple of people.” On reflection, Armata remembers her time as a fashion student as a rollercoaster, a ride that she doesn’t want to get off from. Only except for the blissful return to her grandfather’s farm to help dig for potatoes.