Polish national traditional undergarments

[Costumecrazy]

Hello there,
Thank you for adding me to the group. I'm a dance costume designer and this site should be very interesting for me with all the costume information.
Could you please help me? I'm currently making a Polish national costume for my Daughters dance festival and I want to make sure that I get it all correct. After looking at a lot of pictures I've decided to make a very colourful Łowicz region costume. I would really appreciate any help with what under garments should be worn under the skirt please. For example lace trimmed under skirt, how many? Long knickers/bloomers, what style? Tights, colour? Thank you so much in advance. I really would like to get this correct.
Jennie

[sofiya]

Hi, Jennie
Thank you very much for your questions. We’d love to help you. Right now I don’t have enough of a detailed and accurate info on this topic. But I’ll contact some people and try to get the information for you. I really hope I’ll be able to help you with your daughter’s costume.

[sofiya]

Here’s what I was able to find out. The folk costume of Łowicz region of Poland includes a white starched cotton petticoat with a thin strip of lace on the bottom. The petticoat is usually shorter than the skirt, so the lace is not visible (only during the movement, you can get a glimpse of the lace). Though, child’s skirt is often rather short and puffy, thereafter their petticoat might be visible more frequently.

The tights originally are white. Though, modern grown-up women often use flesh-toned tights. But on kids, the white tights are usually seen.

I couldn’t get any info on the knickers/bloomers.

I hope it was useful for you.

[sofiya]

Here is another piece of information that was provided by Magdalena Bartosiewicz from The Museum in Łowicz.

“Lingerie wasn’t widely used before 1930s. Instead of that, women used to wear long shirts. Then appeared petticoats and pants, both decorated with handmade and fabric lace”.

On the photos below, you can see Polish traditional lingerie. Every piece is decorated with cute handmade lace.

lingerie.jpg (103.31 KiB) Viewed 23770 times

petticoat.jpg (69.34 KiB) Viewed 23770 times

panties.jpg (103.9 KiB) Viewed 23770 times