Ewa Michalak

Ewa Michalak is a Polish bra designer and pattern maker whose Lodz workshop sells made-to-order underwire bras in more than 300 sizes, one of the widest ranges in the trade. She launched the brand under her own name in 2009, after years designing bras for other companies on the Polish market.

The forum that started it

The company's own account of its origins starts online. Around 2009 Michalak came across a Polish internet community of women with large busts, whose rallying line was "the alphabet doesn't end at D." Its members traded tips on bras imported from England, because Polish shops did not stock their sizes.

She saw a design problem. Rather than guess at it, she went to one of the group's meet-ups with prototype bras and a sewing machine, and altered samples on the spot for the women trying them. The first patterns were developed in her flat on the tenth floor of a tower block, with customers taking part in fittings.

From 130 sizes to more than 300

The first range covered 130 sizes, which the company says was about ten times what competitors offered. Michalak also worked out her own method of measuring, built around the circumference of the breast, to bring the recommended size closer to the right one.

Today the range runs to more than 300 sizes. On the European size chart, bands go from 60 to 140 and cups from AA up to P in selected models. Every underwire bra is sewn by hand in the Polish workshop after the order is placed, so delivery times run longer than at a mass brand.

Selling direct

The business sells straight from the designer to the customer, without shops or distributors in between, from its address at Pomorska 41 in Lodz. The New York Times is among the outlets that have written about the brand.

Real customers in the pictures

From the start the brand photographed its bras on customers of different ages and body types rather than on agency models only. The company presents this as an early step in Polish lingerie toward showing real bodies, years before the idea became a marketing staple.

A designer's label

The label is the designer's own name, and the company presents the bras as coming "straight from the designer," with Michalak still credited with the patterns. The Ewa Michalak brand page covers the collections in more detail.

A correction to the record

Older profiles, including the previous version of this page, placed her workshop in Gniezno. The company's address and its own history put it in Lodz, and its founding in 2009 rather than 2005.

Last updated October 7, 2026