MISBHV: ready-to-wear label from Warsaw fusing imagery from East and West

For Warsaw-based designer Natalia Maczek the career in fashion started from customising T-shirts and sweatshirts for her friends under the alias MISBHV. Now a full-scale ready-to-wear label, MISBHV shows during New York Fashion Week and is stocked by over 30 retailers worldwide, including such heavyweights as London’s Selfridges and Montreal’s SSENSE. At the core of this outstanding success is the label’s unique cultural sensibility: in her ultimately desirable and inventive garments Maczek combines skilful referencing with witty bootleg approach. The MISBHV dress code has absorbed influenced of motorcycle culture and prints from old rock band T-shirts, 80s kitch and cycling tops repurposed as rave attire. The juggling and manipulating with meanings for the brand is just as symptomatic as manipulating with physical garments.

A description of one of MISBHV’s collections sums up it perfectly: “a complex dialogue between the harsh, cold surroundings of The East and the ultimate fantasy of The West.”

Text: Anastasiia Fedorova