From the royal table to racy lingerie...
In the highest village in Poland, a lacy evil is taking root and driving the villagers deeper and deeper toward sin and the desecration of a historic art. The lace-making industry in Koniakow, a four-thousand-citizen village in the Silesian highlands of southern Poland, has brought renown and grand acclaim to the region from around the globe. Handmade with crochet hooks and cotton threads, the lacework is then linked together to form intricate tablecloths, altar adornments, bedding, and lace trim for women's garments. A cottage industry and a means for additional cash into a household, the lace-making tradition has been passed from mother to daughter by candlelight after dinner and the evening chores. Gracing the tables of royalty and high-ranking clergy - including Queen Elizabeth II and the late Pope John Paul II - for nearly two-hundred years, the handmade laces of the village's women have brought worldwide recognition and admiration to Koniakow.
Koniakow lace became a source of Polish pride during its communist governance. Subsidized and salaried, the lace-making women of Koniakow were free to produce lace for state-owned shops and for state-managed export. Untroubled by questions of demand in the marketplace, the women were free to produce table adornments and doilies of uncompromised quality. But, with the advent of the Solidarity movement and the fall of communism, the ladies were forced to bring their now-privatized industry to the greater world alone and without any real understanding of what was in demand.
Now, a new generation of women - taught by their mothers the secrets of Koniakow craftsmanship - is quickly seeing the market for complex lacework evaporate as newer, inexpensive fabrics and manufacturing techniques supplant the painstaking crafts. "Traditional lace craft was too expensive, so it wasn't selling anymore. We weren't making a living," said Malgorzata Sanaszek, one of the women affected by the decline in lace sales. So Sanaszek, rather than giving up the craft, decided to try a bold new approach to her lacework. She and others had been making lace undergarments for themselves for years; now, emboldened by a desperation to save a dying tradition, Sanaszek and other young women in the village began making racy, lacy bras and underwear and selling them to tourists at local ski resorts.
Now exuberant and flushed with success, the women formed a collective and took their craft a step further: the internet and the international marketplace. At koniakow.com, the women offer custom-made garments for anyone with the cash to purchase something. No longer the exclusive asset of tycoons, queens and cathedrals, the laces have taken on a more bourgeois flair and brought a new revenue source to a town hard-pressed for funding after the fall of communism.
Economically, the women have stumbled upon a goldmine. The former jewels of the laceworks in Koniakow were its table and altar cloths. A large tablecloth for a wealthy customer would take five months to complete at a cost of around $120. In comparison, each lace-maker can now turn out a new thong each day (average price online - $21). In a village where indoor plumbing is a recently-realized luxury, and the average monthly income hovers just below $250, the difference between producing a traditional, large-scale lace piece or changing pace and churning out undergarments can be five times the profit with lower raw thread costs. The women of the village (and some men, though their ranks are rather low-profile) can increase their monthly revenue by half again simply by crocheting lacy female unmentionables.
These unmentionables, however, have the village in an uproar. While most of the younger generation has embraced the idea of creating sensual clothing, those that taught them the trade are infuriated by the tactical shift. Still a devoutly-conservative Catholic enclave tucked in the Beskid mountains, Koniakow saw a fissure rumble through its ranks almost immediately upon the launch of the new lace campaign three years ago. Anna Barska, a 47-year-old lace maker who has embraced the new trend, has nonetheless been privy to the town's dilemma: "The priest told me that a woman came to confession and asked him if it was a sin to make G-strings." And, indeed, the village's priest thinks affirmatively. Taking to calling out the names of lingerie-making ladies in church, the priest has done little to stifle the boom of this newest of Koniakow's cottage industries. Many of the older ladies practice the new craft in secret; while publicly scornful, few can afford to laugh away the new boom for lace.
While Koniakow lace has little resemblance to the large couch doilies and Catholic vestments of its past, family patterns continue to find their way out to the greater world and onto women's bodies. And, while some fear the newest trend, it appears that Sanaszek, Barska and the other enterprising ladies of this small Silesian village have found a way to keep their centuries-old lace traditions both alive and relevant. And if there is sin in attempting to better one's station through legal means, what good is it to live hungry in a moral world?