Ewa Michalak

Ewa Michalak bras come from Łódź, in central Poland, and carry the name of their designer, a bra pattern cutter who began making large-cup bras for an online community of women in 2009. The company now offers one of the widest size ranges in the trade, from a 60 to a 140 underband and from AA to P cups in selected styles, and it still sells mostly direct from its own shop at Pomorska 41 in Łódź and online.

The older version of this entry placed the workshop in Nowy Tomyśl and dated the brand to 2005. The company's own history and contact details say otherwise: the story starts in 2009, and the business is registered in Łódź.

An interview called "The alphabet does not end at D"

Before her name was on a label, Ewa Michalak was already working in the trade. By her own account she was one of the most sought-after lingerie designers and pattern makers on the Polish market, cutting bras for established manufacturers. In 2009 she read an interview with the founders of Lobby Biuściastych, a Polish online forum for women with large busts, published under the title "Alfabet nie kończy się na D" ("The alphabet does not end at D").

She went to the forum and, in her words, discovered she was an ignoramus. Women were describing how hard it was to buy a bra at all when Polish manufacturers mostly offered about thirteen sizes. Many were ordering bras from Britain, which the forum nicknamed "brytyjczyki", and finding them less comfortable than they had hoped.

Michalak started posting, at first without saying what she did for a living. The members worked it out. The result was a real-world meeting, the first "Zlot Biuściastych" (roughly, a rally of the busty), to which she brought a suitcase of prototype bras in sizes she had never cut before and a sewing machine to alter them on the spot.

The measuring problem

The prototypes were a hit, and more rallies followed. Women sent their measurements in advance, and Michalak sewed bras to order. Most of them still did not fit the woman they were made for.

Her diagnosis was that the standard way of measuring the bust was the problem, not the patterns. She worked out a different method, which the company describes as her own patented approach, and fit accuracy improved sharply. That method still drives the size calculator on the brand's site, where customers enter their measurements rather than guess a size.

Development happened in a workroom on the tenth floor of the high-rise where she lived. Women came there to be fitted and to help build sizes that did not exist in Polish shops, and the company says they often stayed late into the night, sewing, unpicking and sewing again.

Effuniaki: the first bras

The forum members eventually pushed her to open a proper shop. The established Polish lingerie firms she worked with had no interest in extending their size ranges, on the logic that what was already in the catalog was selling. So the label became her own, and the bras took the nickname Effuniaki, from her forum handle.

The first product was a molded plunge bra with a relatively low center gore, offered in 130 sizes, about ten times what other Polish brands offered. The brand photographed its lingerie on customers rather than professional models, women of different shapes, sizes and ages, with very little retouching.

From 130 sizes to more than 300

Customers then asked for other cuts, soft cups and strapless styles among them. Women with sizes beyond the range began writing from abroad and traveling to Łódź for fittings, and the range kept growing until it passed 300 sizes. The company says its workroom produced the largest wearable underwired bra in the world. Then came an interview with the New York Times, and then the brand survived the pandemic, which the brand credits to a loyal customer base.

Ewa Michalak cuts and how the range is organized

The catalog is organized by cut rather than by collection, which tells the brand's priorities. Customers choose between molded underwired bras and soft underwired bras, plunges for deep necklines, multiway styles with convertible straps, front-closing bras, and molded or soft bras for correcting asymmetry. There are separate edits for narrow shoulders and for nude bras, and a bridal line.

Each base pattern has a code, S, PL, SF, FB and BM, and many styles are built on one of them. Most of the range is underwire construction, sewn in the brand's own workroom.

Ewa Michalak sits in the same part of the market as other Polish bra makers such as Gorsenia, but it is unusual even there: it is still a designer-led company that began as a forum member answering other women's questions, and its most quoted number is a size count, not a sales figure.

Last updated October 7, 2026