She may not have won this year's Miss Universe international beauty contest, but Poland's Angelika Jakubowska nevertheless caused a stir, at least among her countrymen and women, with the dress she donned in the "national outfit" section.

The dress consisted of a tight corset laced in the front and a skirt adorned with floral motifs like those on traditional highlanders' shawls. The outfit was topped off with a hat.

The Miss Polonia Office commissioned the national outfit for Jakubowska from fashion designer Elżbieta Krzemińska-Owczarz from Zakopane in southern Poland.

"This was not a purely regional outfit, but a folk-inspired dress designed to promote Poland," Krzemińska-Owczarz said. "The pageant is a show and so the dress needed to be a little theatrical. I was well aware of this as I designed and made the dress."

This year's Miss Universe beauty pageant took place Aug. 23 in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas. The Miss Universe crown went to Stefania Fernandez of Venezuela and the trophy ended up in Venezuela for the second year in a row.

MD