TuZaWinklem - Lokalni producenci i targi w Twojej okolicy

Naftalina

Natalia was working at a vintage shop in Krakow when she bought herself a menswear blazer from the 1980s. She wanted to rip the shoulder pads out of it, but she tore off a whole sleeve instead and could not sew it back on, because she was only just learning to sew. The blazer sat on her desk for a while, until Natalia decided she could simply turn it into a bag. That is how Naftalina started in 2022, named after the nickname her mother used for little Natalia, and after the smell everyone associates with a grandmother wardrobe. The first pieces were torbiszcze, big, hard-wearing bags made from vintage blazers. Today Natalia mostly sews bloomers, trousers inspired by the mid-19th century, worn back then by the first suffragettes and reworked here for a contemporary figure. They are made of old bedsheets, curtains and tablecloths, sometimes with vintage lace, in a home studio with a few machines, where a seamstress helps out with bigger orders. Nothing is designed in advance: she picks up a fabric she sees potential in, washes it, and only then chooses the rest, the colours, the patterns, the unobvious combinations. Sewing was always somewhere close in her family, because her grandfather repaired sewing machines, her grandmother ran a thread-winding business in communist-era Poland, and her mother still handles a needle beautifully.

Every fabric has already had a first life. With Natalia it gets a second one.

What comes out of the Naftalina studio?

Bloomers

Trousers inspired by the mid-19th century, the first ones women in the West were allowed to wear at all, reworked for a modern figure. They can be worn several ways and they follow the body, not the other way round. The same story stands behind every pair: women had to fight for the freedom to wear trousers.

A second life for fabrics

Old bedsheets, curtains, tablecloths, sometimes vintage lace. Natalia buys a fabric the moment she sees potential in it, washes it, and only then looks for an idea. That is where the contrasts, the patterns and the combinations come from, ones nobody could have planned in advance.

A waistband that adjusts

Buttonhole elastic, the same kind as in kindergarten trousers, lets you change the waist size. A body changes over a month and over a year, and one pair keeps up with those changes. No need to buy two.

“You can adjust the clothes to fit you, instead of adjusting yourself to fit the clothes.”