Along with Paul Poiret and Elsa Schiaparelli, who "moved" to the Ethnographic Museum for two weeks in 1935 to examine Matyó pattern drawings, many fashion designers of the era came to Hungary to gain inspiration and study Hungarian folk motifs. Edward Molyneux, Robert Piguet and the American fashion designer Main Rousseau Bocher, also known as Mainbocher, did not leave out the "motif hongrois”-the Hungarian motive from his designs.

The Hungarian Dress Movement and its influence on fashion

Kalotaszeg patterns, Rábaköz motifs, and Matyó embroidery are well-known decorative elements of Hungarian folk art, which became symbols of Hungarian identity after the Treaty of Trianon. Since the mid-1930s, the fashion industry has also increasingly used various folk art motifs to decorate clothes. Fashion columns promoted the Hungarian Dress Movement in picture magazines, fashion shows and film.

The use of folk motifs by fashion designers today raises the question of "cultural appropriation." Does borrowing folk art motifs and techniques without mentioning their original context constitute theft? Cultural appropriation is the improper takeover of elements of one culture by members of another – consistently more dominant and stronger – culture. This often profoundly hurts the exploited community and also creates an economic disadvantage as the revenue flows to the secondary creator without supporting the original community. 

Képes Újság (Newspaper with Visuals) reported in 1974: "Soon, the stewardesses of Malév will be wearing Kalocsa aprons. The Kalocsa Folk Art and Home Industry Cooperative have already created the first piece. Its base material is white, and its edge is lined with a 30-centimetre embroidery. The lace-like apron decoration will be a worthy representation of Hungarian folk art.”

The Modern Etnika Creative Group was founded in 1991 by fashion designer Éva Mészaros. The group transferred the traditions of the folk art of the Carpathian Basin to the designer fashion of the 1990s with high quality, both in terms of fabric selection, tailoring patterns and decoration. It was proven at Hungarian and international exhibitions for years that traditions had created a new aesthetic quality in clothing, thanks to the inventive creators of a certain taste.

The 'Rethink/re-button! Magyar is the Mode'

Lea Gottlieb (1918, Sajószentpéter, 1918 – 2012, Tel Aviv, 2012) was born as Lea Lenke Róth. She wanted to study chemistry, but because of the laws applying to Jews, she wasn’t allowed to. She met her husband, Ármin Gottlieb, shortly before World War II, when she worked as an accountant in the Gottlieb family's raincoat factory. After Germany occupied Hungary, her husband was deported to a forced labour camp, and she and her daughters were first hiding from the Nazis in Sajószentpéter, then in Budapest.

Jaqueline Erzsébet Mária, Countess Almásy de Zsadány et Törökszentmiklós, attracted the attention of the higher circles not only with her beauty and love for fashion but also with her second wedding that took place in Budapest 10 January: her husband was none other than Louis J. Cartier, the famous French jeweller and watchmaker. Jacqueline Almásy was considered a beauty both in Budapest and Paris, so one of the most outstanding fashion photographers of the 20th century, George Hoyningen-Huene, also photographed her for the French Vogue.  

In the 1950s, socialist cultural policy actively counted on the "creative collaborators" and "natural talents" who represented the continuation of the folk art and decorative folk art tradition. Their design work fundamentally determined the style of the products made by Home Industry cooperatives. 

The dialogue between folk attires, bourgeois fashion, and high-quality dressmaking is rarely discussed, as they seem to be contradictory phenomena. Traditional folk costumes come about as the product of a community or the individual influence of unknown creators. They are tied to a single region and symbolise permanence.

Designing clothes was a passion of the Hungarian-born American fashion designer, writer and textile artist Mariska Kárász (Budapest, 1898-Danbury, USA, 1960). She made colourful garments with varied patterns, which were primarily inspired by Hungarian folk art. She left Hungary in 1914, but her interest in fashion and talent attracted her to New York, not Paris. She learned to sew and embroider by herself. She visited Hungary several times after that: in 1925, 1926 and 1930.