Karolina Żebrowska

Karolina Żebrowska is a popular vintage and fashion history YouTuber.

She has more than a million subscribers on her YouTube channel by the name Karolina Żebrowska.

Karolina is also an author and filmmaker.

Introduction-

Karolina Żebrowska was born on 26 June 1990 in Kraków, Poland.

She grew up in Poland.

Her parents are businesspersons.

Karolina has a younger sister, Gosia Żebrowska and she is also into vintage and fashion history.

Education-

Karolina did her schooling in Poland.

In 2012, she joined Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland to study film studies and media.

After graduating, in September 2016, Karolina joined Screen Academy Scotland in Edinburgh, Scotland to study for a MA in Film Directing.

Love for vintage costumes-

Initially, her sister got into vintage costumes and in 2016, Karolina developed a deep passion for vintage and historical costumes and fashion.

As she was a broke teenager and wasn’t in a position to afford the luxurious silk and 100% alpaca wool to make costumes, she used to make costumes from curtains, IKEA blankets, cheap duvets and bed sheets.

Karolina made her first ever historical costume by using the curtains of her parents’ living room.

Those were gold coloured heavy polyester curtains which her parents were planning to take down and so, she made a regency dress from them.

During that time, Karolina was inspired by reading a lot of costuming blogs and she learnt sewing from her parents.

At that time, as she was broke, she used to buy second-hand materials and wasn’t in a position to buy enough yardage and as a result, her skirts used to come out narrower and she used to use a lot of hot glue gun on her accessories.

Due to all these workarounds, many times Karolina’s costumes used to not look historical but she didn’t quit making them.

Modelling & filmmaking-

After completing her schooling, Karolina signed up on an amateur modelling website and started modelling in her holidays.

She did modelling for a couple of months and during this time, she was obsessed with taking photographs of people and things.

After joining the university, Karolina started producing silent movies with historical costumes.

She produced three movies during the first year of her university namely, Confusions of a Wasted Youth, The Fawley Case and Lucy’s Typewriter.

Her YouTube channel-

On 24 June 2012, Karolina started her YouTube channel by the name Karolina Żebrowska.

During that time, she used to also run a Polish blog on vintage and historical costumes.

On her YouTube channel, initially, Karolina used to publish videos in Polish.

Later, she published a video in English which became viral and then, she was torn between creating Polish videos and English videos.

Karolina feared that if she continued making videos in Polish, the English audience that she gained from her viral English video would not watch her Polish videos.

And so, she wanted to produce videos in English as it is a universal language but here also, she was torn between American English and British English.

Karolina was taught British English at school but she found it difficult to speak and she feared that her audience might make fun of her accent.

Ultimately, she started producing videos in English and thanks to this, now she attracts a global audience.

A successful YouTuber-

Initially, her videos on fashion history used to not get decent views but eventually her fashion history and costume videos started getting hundreds of thousands, sometimes, millions of views.

As of August 2022, Karolina has 1.25M subscribers on her channel and has 265K followers on Instagram.

She also has a Pinterest profile with multiple boards.

Karolina earns through a variety of sources like advertisements on her YouTube videos, receiving sponsorships and selling merchandise.

Initially, apart from YouTube, she used to also earn by doing random freelance jobs for her family and friends but later, she started completely depending on her YouTube channel.

Her books-

Karolina published a book titled- Modowe rewolucje: Niezwykła historia naszych szaf (which translates to- Fashion revolutions: The extraordinary history of our wardrobes).

This book was published on 1 January 2019 and is currently only available in Polish.

Karolina also published another book- Polskie piękno Sto lat mody i stylu which translates to- Polish beauty One hundred years of fashion and style.

Some interesting facts about Karolina Żebrowska-

Karolina is an avid traveller and has travelled to almost all European countries like Scotland (her favourite country), Finland, Austria, Italy, London, Norway, Ireland, Czechia, Latvia, France, Netherlands, Lithuania, Greece, Hungary, Romania and Germany.
She likes the men’s fashion era of the 1920s and she also likes the high colours of the regency era.
Karolina likes the costumes of The Promised Land and of Kraków, Poland. She also likes the outfits portrayed in the early 17^th century Dutch paintings.
She is left-handed and 175cm tall.
Karolina is an ailurophile and has a pet cat, Filemon.
Pączki with rose jam is her favourite dish and she likes the art nouveau furniture and art deco furniture.
Karolina is a music lover and listens to a variety of music like Mozart, Debussy, Saint-Saëns, rap, folk music, 1960s garage rock, cinematic classical music, Bardcore music, etc.
Ice skating is her hobby and her favourite ways to relax is by reading, using scented candles and playing games.
Totally Spies is her favourite TV show.
Karolina’s favourite novels are Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion.
She is a polyglot as she knows English, Polish and German.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Karolina Żebrowska?

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