Patriae

“I remember doing little crochet projects when I was five, starting to sew at 6, and always playing with the antique textiles in my grandparents’ houses in Slovakia,” says Barbara Pisch, part of a family of expert tailors and garmentos going back generations. The designer behind Patriae was born in Slovakia during Communist rule; at age nine, she moved to New Jersey with her family, who were political refugees. Three years later, following the fall of the Communist regime, she returned to Slovakia, and to the antique textiles — homemade and home-spun until the mid-20th century — that had so fueled her imagination as a child. Now she and her mother run a small studio near her shop, where they transform these fabrics — rich with the stories of the women who made them — into tote bags and aprons. “When we went back in 1990, I started collecting these old fabrics immediately — they were my language, and my way of attaching myself to my own culture,” Pisch says. “It was all women's work from beginning to end, from planting the flax to harvesting it, working it, processing it, cleaning the fibers, spinning them into thread and weaving them into textiles. They signify my history — and women's history, specifically.”