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Welcome to Back of the Napkin, musings from Serviette for the cultured world.
The cultural review is an artifact Serviette finds endlessly fascinating—and one we are arguably losing to time. Perhaps they emerge when we need them most: quiet heroes in moments of social change or unrest. (If any readers are thinking of starting their own, consider this your sign.)
Enter Ti I Ja (“You and Me”), a Polish fashion and arts magazine known for its distinctive cut-and-paste aesthetic and penchant for “creative plagiarism.” Emerging in the late 1950s in the wake of Stalinism, Ti I Ja offered Poland’s emergent “socialist middle class” small pleasures in the face of economic scarcity, courtesy of the Polish Women’s League. Though the publication had faced considerable physical limitations—largely owing to the government’s meager paper allocation and financial constraints—it provided a seemingly endless source of inspiration for the era’s intelligentsia, particularly educated young women.
Flipping through its pages, one might find collaged Marie Claire and Elle photo spreads sandwiched between translations of Simone de Beauvoir and Ernest Hemingway and designs by up-and-coming Polish fashion designers. Readers could also expect home-sewing patterns for constructing clothing on a dime, interior design advice, and collections by prominent Western fashion houses such as Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent. To Ti I Ja’s faithful readers, “taking care of themselves and how they looked was a form of everyday resistance.”
The magazine was a master class in creative problem-solving and resilience. When its creators couldn’t afford the rights to reproduce images from Western magazines, they simply cut them up and collaged them into something entirely new. Covers were hand-drawn by Roman Cieślewicz of the Polish poster school rather than photographed, partly to save money, resulting in the now-iconic imagery that married Russian Constructivism and Western Pop Art with a remarkably deft hand. (Serendipitously, the graphics looked even better printed on the porous, lower-quality paper.) Though Ti I Ja ran only until 1973, it left an indelible mark on Poland’s cultural imagination and far beyond.
Perhaps, like the creators of Ti I Ja, we already have all the materials at our disposal—we simply need to cut them up and rearrange them into something new.
To Serviette, perfumery ought to take a similar cue. For those looking for a signature scent as colorful as a flip through the pages of a psychedelic Pop Art magazine, consider Byronic Hero’s diesel-exhaust accord or Sour Diesel’s floral kush accord on for size.
We thank you kindly for reading this week’s newsletter. And now, a final parting gift: a selection of Ti I Ja’s finest covers for your perusal.