“I’m going with the stream of the river…”

Czech fashion designer Jakub Polanka is the winner of the “Kontakt Fashion Award 2008”, the prize awarded by Erste Bank for fashion design from Central and Eastern Europe. His fashion seems cool, but behind it there is a poetic concept.

“I’m living a metaphorical life. I’m going with the stream of the river...” Sentences that one would hardly expect from Jakub Polanka, a fashion designer in his late twenties who presented cool grey clothes with a Spartan use of colour at the “8 festival for fashion and photography” in June 2008. The idea for this collection came to him in his room in Paris, where through a window above his bed Jakub has a view of the sky. “I saw the sky, the clouds and an airplane making its way slowly across the heavens leaving a vapour trail behind it. This was such an illuminating moment for me and also one of unbelievable depth.”
Jakub’s style is as ephemeral as it is architectural: “There’s a symbol for woman in Japanese martial art”, says this designer. “The bamboo. It is intended to mean that a women is as strong as the roots of a bamboo and as beautiful as its flowers.” Jakub's collection, which he presented in Vienna, is inspired by this image. The pieces are intended to caress the body of women who wear them and to harmonise with the way they move and their personality. Polanka's designs clearly reveal that he studied architecture, and the striking way in which he drapes fabric attains sculptural qualities.
Jakub Polanka grew up in Czechoslovakia. He studied architecture and design in Prague. “ Back then we learned how to make something out of nothing. Creativity developed out of a do-it-yourself mentality that was born of necessity.” Today the Czechs lack the courage to buy native products; Western brands and mass-market textiles are still regarded as something special. “The Western creed of individuality has not yet got through to my fellow countrymen and women, for far too long  they were forced to tie-dye their own T-shirts and clearly they still feel that they have had enough of this kind of thing.”
In 2004 Jakub Polanka moved from Prague to Paris to study at the “Institut Francais de la Mode”: “In the Czech Republic I could, at best, have lived out my creativity in a garage.” In Paris he was discovered by Philippe Starck and worked for two years in the team of this star designer before going into business for himself with his own collection.
In response to the question about whom he would like to dress, Jakub's eyes begin to sparkle. The British actress Tilda Swinton. He regards her performance in “Orlando” – the wonderful balance between masculine and feminine – as of great stylistic importance for the present era. A kind of harmony that the designer Jakub Polanka also wants to achieve in his work. His fashion strives to be “equilibre”, direct, clear and flowing: “I’m going with the stream of the river. Always trying to say something through something else.” “Fashion”, says Jakub, “is the poetry of the 21st century.”