Kowtow Founder, Gosia Piatek’s North London Home
Having found herself in London’s Crouch End (via her homeland of Poland, Italy, and later New Zealand), Kowtow founder Gosia Piatek has grown to love the cultural capital, with its outstanding art, theatre and — perhaps most importantly for this honorary Kiwi — brunch. Her Victorian home is framed by a charming English garden that provides Gosia and her family, partner Thomas & son Laker, with a steady supply of home grown flowers and organic produce. Her thoughtful, minimalist style is evident both at home, and in the collection of Fairtrade organic cotton clothing that has garnered Kowtow’s loyal following. No change is too big, or too small for this brand - from replacing all synthetic thread with a natural alternative, to having Kowtow’s workroom food waste collected by a local urban farmer. Our thought-provoking conversation this week spans a shared appreciation for supply-chain transparency, natural fibres, and protecting our planet's precious resources.
“I live in Crouch End, North London with my partner Thomas and our 10 year old son Laker. We have been here for about 6 years. My most favorite thing about the house is the sense of space, it is a bit wider than the typical Victorian house in London and we have an extension that is very light filled and bright and opens up directly onto our amazing vegetable garden that Thomas created earlier this year all from seed! Before this we had a pretty boring rectangular lawn and now it is an oasis of organic veg. Beyond our garden we share two acres of land with our neighbours that got saved from developers, so it is an exceptionally free range upbringing for our son. I really love the sense of community this shared space has created, we are super close to our neighbours and we have so many cute traditions throughout the year including an easter egg hunt, a camp out, pumpkin carving and Christmas carols. It’s very cute and wholesome.”
I really love the sense of community this shared space has created, we are super close to our neighbours and we have so many cute traditions throughout the year including an easter egg hunt, a camp out, pumpkin carving and Christmas carols.
“Our bedroom has just been plastered and instead of painting it we left it the most beautiful dusty pink colour, which has so much movement and texture, it’s so wonderful and warm that to my eyes it doesn’t need any embellishment with paintings or too many objects. I go to bed pretty early and adore getting into bed under our fluffy duvet and gorgeous IN BED linen! Lucky us! I like watching shows and films in bed, maybe now that I am old I can get a secret TV in the room, or would that be sacrilege? I never ever watch TV in our living room, the thought of having to transport myself from the sofa to bed is just far too cumbersome. As far as interiors go I like our bedroom to be sparse, I don’t like cluttered environments as they become dust traps.”
“I work a lot from our front room, the sunniest room. It has a very high ceiling and a wonderful collection of art books on Vitsoe shelving, which I adore for its simplicity and function. My favourite items are the most fleeting, there is nothing better than a freshly picked vase of our home grown flowers. At the moment we are coming up to Autumn in London so we have cosmos and rudbeckia.”
“I’m a staunch minimalist and my partner is a maximalist, for the two to overlap is very difficult but I think we have learnt valuable style lessons from each other. But I think I used to be so minimal that it didn’t create any warmth for guests, it was too sterile and what I have learnt from Thomas is the appreciation of textures and materials. I have a love and natural tendency towards natural materials - wood and stone and a love of white and most recently plaster. I embellish the house with flowers and try to grow them all year round so there’s always something to pick.”
“I was a snow bunny before I started Kowtow, chasing snow and living in the most beautiful places in the world. I think the majestic nature I was a part of each day made a huge impact on my soul and I knew that whatever I did next had to be in preservation of the planet. Kowtow was born at a local vegetarian restaurant in Wellington, New Zealand. A friend suggested that I should start a certified Fairtrade organic cotton clothing brand, after some research I thought - this is it! I was surprised that 18 years ago no one knew where their clothing was from and who made it. Working in the Fairtrade and organic cotton production chain does exactly that, it is a fully transparent journey of the garment from the farm level which is so special.”
Gosia's bed is made with an organic combination of Khaki & White 100% Linen.
“We only use certified Fairtrade organic cotton throughout our entire collection. From this wondrous plant we create knitwear, denim, jersey and woven collections each season from yarn, this means we get to design the fabric, colour, texture and prints unique to us. Every fabric in our collections is designed from the picking of the cotton at the farm 18 months in advance of it hitting stores. For a few years we did introduce other sustainable fibres into our collections such as tencel, wool and recycled nylon for swimwear. But these additional fibres compromised our production chain, so we made a huge call in 2020 to go back to our roots of what we truly believe in and went back to being a single fibre brand and embrace the magic of our 18 years with fairtrade organic cotton.”
We as a medium sized brand have replaced enough synthetic thread with natural to wrap a quarter away around the globe!
“Additionally we decided to be super brave and create a huge goal to make every collection into the future plastic-free. This sounds easier than done, as plastics are hidden in all garments regardless of the composition labels. For example; all of our buttons are made from shells and nuts, our elastic is made from natural rubber with an organic cotton outer and the one I am most proud of is replacing the thread that stitches the garment together. Industry standard is to use polyester and we have replaced this for organic cotton. To give you an idea of the impact, we as a medium sized brand, have replaced enough synthetic thread with natural to wrap a quarter away around the globe! In just one collection. All of our efforts towards going plastic-free is for us to reach full circularity with our garments. When we learnt that at the end of the life of a garment, the synthetic bits cannot be recycled with the natural components, it became very clear to us that we had to do something about it.”
“What I’ve realised from all of this, is that none of it is rocket science, it's practical and requires the desire to want to do better.”
“Before we became free of plastic in our collections we had already been doing so much internally. We now release a bi-annual impact report, so we can measure our impact from year to year to keep us accountable to do better. These encapsulate big ticket items such as carbon emissions to the small things like how much rubbish we produce, yes we weigh our workroom rubbish! In the workroom we have a pretty insane recycling station setup and we generate very, very little landfill rubbish as we have found solutions for so much, including getting our food waste picked up by a local urban farmer on his bicycle.”
We now release bi-annual impact report, so we can measure our impact from year to year to keep us accountable to do better.
Gosia's collection of ceramics, made by her own hand at a local pottery studio.
“I moved to London as my partner is a Londoner and most of his film directing work comes out of Europe. We went through long periods of not seeing each other as I was in New Zealand working at Kowtow and he was in Europe. It basically didn’t work with a small child in tow. So I made the sacrifice of moving here more permanently after lockdown, as the business got to a stage where it didn’t require me anymore, just monthly board meetings. I still go back to New Zealand every summer for a few months to check in with the business, friends and family. In my heart NZ is my home. So even through these crazy challenges, I do see myself very fortunate and London is growing on me.
In this city you have to embrace what’s amazing about it and for me it is the culture, there is amazing art, theatre and people watching.
“I love making special trips to see art. Every gallery is amazing in its own way, one of the many amazing galleries is the Tate Britain for its beautiful stairwell and collection of mid century English art. I adore anything by Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. We love to go to the theater, recently I took my bestie in London for her birthday to the Sadlers Wells to see Akram Khan's Giselle ballet. I seriously think it was one of the most powerful pieces of performance I have ever seen. London is amazing for breaking stereotypes and injecting a fresh perspective into art. Eating out in East London is the best for me, I love brunch, it must be in my muscle memory from NZ, I’m also not a night owl.”
“Our new head designer, Dayne’s collection comes out in Feb, 2025. Dayne worked on the range over a year ago, but because of our lead times back to the cotton farms we’ve had to wait patiently. I’m also looking forward to making more Australian connections, we have a new Kowtow store in Melbourne and Australia is such a huge growing market for us, we want to meet as many creative minds as possible! Personally, I just want to stay healthy, keep doing regular yoga and eating well and now spend as much time as possible under my new IN BED linen since it’s coming into autumn/winter here.”
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