When we started to produce the underwear of the famous Koniakow lace, it rised controversy and emotions in Koniakow. It's seen by some elders in this small village as sin and disgrace of an ancient respectful profession of lace making. In fact the new twist was given to the koniakow lace and new products - handmade lace lingerie, especially g-strings, quickly became very popular.

A lot of artciles were published about the new ideas of koniakow lace makers in polish and foreign press. We present links to some of them below. The older ones are presented directly on this site.

    "Lace makers move into G-strings", BBC - UK

    "So sexy kan handarbeit sein", Krone.at - Austria

    "Heilige Höschen", Stern - Germany

    "Fancy Pants", Chicago Tribune - USA

    The New York Times (USA) 15th of May, 2005

    The Independent (UK) 8th of August, 2004

    Wall Street Journal (USA) 4th of June, 2004

    Chicago Tribune (USA) 7th of March, 2004

    "Liberation" (France) 21st of February, 2004

Veruschka's Secret

By MARK ELLWOOD
THE NEW YORK TIMES, May 15, 2005

Three years ago, the women of Koniakow, a small village in southwest Poland (the country's lacemaking center), had a knotty problem: no orders. Driven by necessity, they started producing lacy thongs that were sold to tourists at the nearby ski resorts. A collective was formed to sell the lingerie online (www.koniakow.com ), and orders began pouring in from as far away as Japan.But the story doesn't stop there. First, the National Folk Art Society started legal proceedings, claiming that the women were sullying the town's storied lacemaking reputation. Then the local priest took to listing suspected thong makers in his weekly Sunday sermons. No word yet on how many have repented.

Pope's altar cloth makers turn to a more profitable line - thongs

By Hilary Davies
The Independent
Koniakow, Poland, 08 August 2004

The Polish village of Koniakow is not its former serene self. Is the reason bitter wartime memories or the legacy of 50 years of Communist rule? No. It is underwear. Very skimpy, very tight underwear.

For hundreds of years the local lace-making grannies have been crocheting altar cloths and Roman Catholic vestments, including one altar cloth for the Pope. But some have switched production in rather a dramatic fashion. They have started making thongs - and the Church is not happy about it. So unhappy, in fact, that the local priest has even been naming and shaming the thong-makers in church on Sundays.

Traditionalists agree with this tough line. At the village's one-room lace museum, Mieczyslaw Kamieniarz fumed: "All of Koniakow is ashamed." He points to the walls of the museum, which are papered with the awards his wife's lacework has won. "Just think, we've made Koniakow lace for altar cloths, priests' robes, even the Pope himself. And now people are going to wear Koniakow lace on their arses," he said.

The makers of the stringi, as they are known, are unabashed. After all, business is booming. Malgorzata Stanaszek, a lace maker in her twenties, set up a production company and its website now has orders flooding in from as far away as the US and Japan.

Commercial success, however, cannot mask a certain reticence to talk among the stringi makers. One, in her 60s, didn't want to give her name, but behind the closed doors of her wooden hut she tipped a colourful pile of exquisitely crafted thongs on to the table. "We all make them, but a lot of women are afraid to admit it," she said. "They are afraid of having their names called out in church."

Irena, whose daughter is working as a cleaning lady in Britain, is not intimidated. "I can use the money," she said. "Nowadays you can see bare bottoms all over the TV anyway."

Another, Teresa, said: "If we listened to everything the priest says, we wouldn't earn a penny. Anyway, he'll have to come to terms with it soon. It's the stringi that are funding his contributions."

Until 1989, the old regime's support for "folk craft" meant the village lace-makers enjoyed a regular income stocking state-owned handicraft shops. But since the shops were privatised, business has fallen away and the Church's demand for altar cloths and decorations is strong enough to benefit only a lucky few. Hence the stringi - decadent but profitable.

Polish lace makers at odds over recent switch to G-strings

By Jabeen Bhatti
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, June 4, 2004

KONIAKOW, Poland - For two centuries, the women of this small Silesian highlands town have hooked thread in intricate crochet patterns to create lace tablecloths and altar ornaments coveted by royalty across Europe.

It was an art taught by mothers to daughters, done at home after the daily farming chores were finished, bringing honor and income to the 500-year-old village in southwest Poland still traversed by horse-drawn carts.

Then came G-strings. Last fall, some lace makers trying to earn money spun a racy twist to the art, deciding that underwear would sell better than doilies. Since, the town of 3,000 has been in an uproar, neighbor pitted against neighbor, over the "stringi," Polish for string.

"Lace making has always been a way for people to earn money here" says Teresa Stanko, the 56-year-old mayor of the village in a strongly conservative part of Poland that produced Pope John Paul II. "But since the stringi thing started, the community has been divided: about money, about morality, about tradition," the mayor says.

Some traditional lace makers accuse the renegade lace makers of greed. Others say the thongs defile tradition, are indecent and promote sex. "Our lace graces Polish altars, the office of our president and that of the holy pope in Rome," says Helena Kamieniarz, 73, the president of a local craft guild of lace makers who has been working with lace for six decades. "And suddenly, our lace is turning up - I don't dare say where. How did the lace makers of Koniakow come to this?"

"Times are tough," said Zuzanna Gwarek, who runs a lace gallery on the town's main street. She reached under a pile of ivory tablecloths to pull out white lace G-strings hidden there. "Handkerchiefs and tablecloths don't sell well."

Lace making in Koniakow began in the 19th century when young women began creating caps of white lace to don after their weddings. Soon after, say lace makers, women in the town began to weave tablecloths, altar ornaments, clergy robe collars and other ornaments that adorn Polish religious and family occasions, as a way to supplement their income. Like heirlooms, patterns and lace needles passed through generations.

During communist times, business was good. The community was supported by the state in official craft guilds and subsidized as a nationally recognized art. Orders poured in from state-run stores, prominent officials wanting to use them to present as official gifts and clergy who used the lace in ceremonies and on their clothing.

Things changed when communism collapsed in the late 1980s. The government subsidies stopped and state-store orders dried up. Borders opened to influence and products from the West. People became poorer as they lost state jobs in the former planned-economy.

Desperate to save a dying tradition and earn money in a region that scrapes by on agriculture, some lace makers joked last year that sexy would sell better, says Malgorzata Stanaszek, 30, who has been making lace since she was 7.

The scanty underwear some lace makers already were quietly making for themselves started stirring local debate in January.

That is when Sergiusz Kozubek, 26, who created the town's Web site, began offering the thongs on the site for about $21. Each pair can be made to a customer's specifications of color and design, complete with a personalized name on the front.

Lace thongs tangle with Polish town's traditions By making undies instead of religious items, business booms, but controversy breaks out

By Tom Hundley
CHICAGO TRIBUNE (USA), Published March 7, 2004

The unlikely confluence of traditional lace, Internet marketing and man's apparently boundless desire to buy something skimpy and sexy for his girlfriend or wife has dramatically revived Koniakow's lacemaking industry.

"We weren't selling much lace, so we had to think of something," said Malgorzata Stanaszek, 30, who, like almost all of the women in the village, has been making lace since childhood.

"We asked ourselves, `What can we make that would be more marketable?'" added her sister Teresa Matuszna, 29.

The answer was the thong.

"It wasn't one woman's idea. It was more like a collective idea," Stanaszek said.

That was about two years ago. The women in the village started turning out thongs and sold them through a kind of local cooperative. Sales were brisk.

A few months ago, Stanaszek and Matuszna took their lace undies online (www.koniakow.com). Since then, orders have been pouring in from Germany, France, Switzerland and, after a visit from Japanese television, the Far East.

Stanaszek said she has a backlog of orders big enough to keep four lacemakers busy into the spring. Not surprisingly, most of the Internet orders are from men. Female purchasers tend to be over 40 and into the larger sizes, she added.

The unexpected boom in lacemaking has lifted the economy in a town that scrapes by on agriculture, a dying woolen industry and a few tourists drawn to nearby ski resorts. But the new prosperity has not been without controversy.

Helena Kamieniarz, the regional head of the national folk art society, has filed a lawsuit, arguing that the making of thongs had "disgraced" Koniakow's good name and "profaned" its lacemaking tradition.

Indeed, before thongs-- and the similarly minimalist bras that accompany them--Koniakow's lacemaking was squarely in the realm of the sacred. A large portion of its output went to the Roman Catholic Church, for years the central institution in Polish life.

The surplice and alb that priests wear are usually lace-trimmed, and Koniakow lace was long considered the finest. Polish altars are decorated with lace cloths, and the cloth used to cover the chalice is often trimmed with lace. Christenings, first communions and weddings are also lacy occasions.

As a young cardinal in nearby Krakow, Karol Wojtyla, who later became Pope John Paul II, gave a big boost to Polish lacemakers by reviving the Feast of Corpus Christi as a major religious holiday. The traditional national costumes worn by women and girls for Corpus Christi processions are trimmed with lace. Not long ago, Stanaszek and Matuszna joined others from their parish on a journey to Rome to present the pope with an example of Koniakow lace.

These days the village has about 4,000 residents, and, according to the sisters, almost all of the women are involved in lacemaking.

"There are men who do it too, but they don't like to admit it," said Matuszna.

"It's the grandmas and mamas who teach it to their daughters. You have got to teach them when they are 6 or 7 years old because that's when the hands are the most agile. If you are an adult, it's too late. You will never learn," her sister added.

Unique family designs are passed down through the generations, as are the special hooks used to make lace. A lost or broken hook is a catastrophe: It can take months to get used to a new one, the sisters said.

Despite the profits, lacemaking in Koniakow is still treated as a spare-time activity. Stanaszek, who has two small children, tends to her chores on the family's farm before heading to her job at a meat store. She does her lacemaking "in between."

It usually takes about a day--"depending on my mood"--to turn out a thong, she said.

Many of the older women in Koniakow have stuck with making traditional items such as clerical vestments and tablecloths. But almost all the younger women have switched to the stringi, as the thong or g-string is called in Polish.

Stanaszek and Matuszna scoff at the cheap synthetic stuff made by machines. They said that the handmade lace thongs are much more durable--and more important--don't itch.

Grâce au string, une dentelliere polonaise n'est plus a découvert Les traditionnelles nappes et coiffes se vendant mal, une mere de famille a opté pour ce sous-vetement qu'elle vend par l'Internet.

Par Maja ZOLTOWSKA
Liberation (Grance), samedi 21 février 2004

es qu'elle a un moment de libre, Malgorzata Stanaszek sort son crochet et fait de la dentelle. Une image qui a premiere vue ne surprend personne dans ce petit village des montagnes des Beskidy, dans le sud de la Pologne. Beaucoup de femmes y vivent encore du travail de leurs mains. Seule différence, cette jeune mere de famille, au lieu de faire des nappes toutes blanches, confectionne depuis avril des strings roses, noirs ou rouges. J'aurais préféré faire quelque chose de plus sérieux, mais ici on n'a pas le choix , explique sa soeur, diplômée d'une école d'administration, au chômage, et qui lui donne un coup de main lorsque les commandes affluent.

Pour ne pas susciter l'indignation du village, elles écoulent leur production via l'Internet (1). Ces strings, pour femme uniquement, sont vendus 25 euros. Les commandes affluent de toute la Pologne, mais aussi d'Allemagne et meme du Canada. Le client doit préciser la taille et la couleur. A moi de choisir le dessin. Chaque string est unique, je ne répete jamais deux fois le meme motif, meme si ce sont des coeurs ou fleurs qui dominent , explique Malgorzata. Elle et sa soeur produisent quatre ou cinq pieces par semaine et leur mere les aide s'il y a davantage de commandes. De quoi arrondir les fins de mois du petit magasin d'alimentation familial. Je m'y suis faite, il faut bien gagner sa vie, soupire la dentelliere, mais je ne comprends pas comment on peut porter ces culottes qui découvrent plus qu'elles devraient cacher.

Elle se bat pour pouvoir payer les memes impôts que les dentellieres traditionnelles de Koniakow : Le fisc nous impose une TVA de 22 %, classant les strings dans la catégorie des dessous, sans accepter d'y voir des pieces artisanales, faites avec la meme technique que les nappes ou les coiffes qui, elles, ne sont taxées que de 5 %. Pour Helena Kamieniarz, l'aînée des dentellieres, il est hors de question de traiter sur le meme plan ces strings et les véritables dentelles : Le string est une honte pour notre village qui doit sa réputation depuis deux cents ans aux dentelles. Mes mains ne pourraient jamais faire ce genre de choses , ajoute cette femme de 80 ans qui se vante d'avoir fait des dentelles pour Jean-Paul II, la reine d'Angleterre et l'épouse du président polonais. Mais les dentelles traditionnelles se vendent de moins en moins, ce qui décourage les jeunes d'apprendre le métier. Les strings peuvent sauver l'art de la dentelle, assure Malgorzata. Ça se vend. Meme les vieilles dentellieres commencent a les faire en cachette.