Raffles 1887

DIARY OF A LONG BAR

The glory days of Warsaw

Culture
Warsaw

Elegant fin-de-siècle parties and dazzling inter-war balls: if the walls at Raffles Europejski Warsaw’s Long Bar could talk, what glamorous tales might they whisper? We’ve delved into the archives to find out…

LEGEND has it that when The Rolling Stones played Warsaw in 1967, they drank so many vodka shots in the bar of the Europejski Hotel that they had to crawl back to their rooms on all fours. Such indecorous displays are long forgotten: when the hotel was restored more than a decade ago, the bar was transformed into an elegant Long Bar, and the stories it tells today hark back to an era of dazzling balls, glittering parties and chic soirées of late 19th- and early 20th-century Warsaw. 

Opened in 1857, the Europejski had become famous for its New Year’s Eve parties – immortalised in the Polish 19th-century classic novel The Doll by Boleslaw Prus and popular with writers, poets and artists such as Jozef Chelmonski and Witkacy, who had their studios there. Nothing on the Warsaw social scene, however, ever shone more brightly than its annual Fashion Balls, held between the two great wars, when the glamorous Polish capital rejoiced in the nickname of ‘Paris of the North’.

The balls – 16 in total – were originally conceived to promote the city’s elite fashion houses, clothing boutiques, tailoring workshops and hair salons. Here, society’s greatest beauties – aristocrats, actresses, film stars, and dancers – danced, sipped champagne, and lined up on the stairs to be photographed in their finery, each vying to be named Queen of the Ball. This was the ultimate accolade, both for the winner’s vanity and for the designers of the clothes they wore, as it could ensure the success of their business. Records were meticulously kept: in 1929, for example, we know the winner was cabaret artiste and actress Zula Pogorzelska, swathed in a spectacular pink and blue crinoline by the renowned Gustaw Zmigryder atelier. 

Probably the best remembered Queen, thanks to a series of erotically charged photographs, was actress Nina Andrycz, who was awarded the crown in 1938; the most poignant, because she was the last ever Queen, was Maria Malicka, an actress and theatre owner, who wore a crinoline made of the most delicate lace from the Goussin Cattley fashion house. The title of Most Beautiful Lady of Warsaw that year, meanwhile, went to dancer and actress Loda Halama, who wore a pink gown adorned with wildflowers from the Lucyna atelier. 

Eight months later saw the outbreak of the Second World War and the Fashion Balls – and most of the ateliers – were gone forever. But their high spirits live on at Raffles Europejski Warsaw, etched into the very fabric of the building, and Nina Andrycz, dressed for the Fashion Ball, remains one of the most beautiful symbols of Poland’s golden age.