2025

“The century is drawing to its close” was my first fashion show and exhibition... But it was also more than that... A generational statement... Since it was done by a large group of friends who had been hanging out together since the late ’80s in Belgrade. Going out to night clubs Akademija, Zvezda, and later Fuzija, Buha, Omen... to exhibitions and concerts at the Student Cultural Centre, House of the Youth and other places.
It was also the first Vesna Pavlović’s photo exhibition, as well as probably the first bigger concert of friends who will be playing later with Darkwood Dub and Pressing.

I was making my “paper collections” throughout all my teens, and I was getting acquainted with fashion by looking at The Face, Italian Vogue, or any other Western magazine someone would bring. Jean Paul Gaultier was my idol. Costumes he designed for Peter Greenaway’s “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover” were an infinite source of inspiration.

Gradually, my drawings started becoming more abstract... animated forms... just like a play of black and white shapes which were evolving and revolving around the body...
I wasn’t even thinking about them as something that should be worn... not as a fashion item in the conventional sense of the term, at least... They were pure imagination...
Many years later, I found by chance, while browsing on the internet, the work of Maria Blaisse [https://mariablaisse.com]... Her costume designs “Kuma Guna” (1996) were something that might have been closest to the idea of materialisation of my designs... It was beautiful to see...

To exhibit my drawings in the gallery of the Student Cultural Centre was, of course, the idea of Biljana Tomić, my mom. I still don’t know how I said yes...
To make just an exhibition of my “fashion” drawings seemed not enough, though... I needed context and a conceptual frame... a statement about fashion as I was seeing it...

Late ’80s in Belgrade were still under the spell of postmodern theories, and I was reading Gilles Lipovetsky, Jean Baudrillard, and similar authors at the time... Thinking about pastiche, collage, and perpetual appropriation and re-contextualisation of the imagery...

I wanted to make an anti-fashion show. A show in which I would style vintage garments, instead of showing something new. The purpose of the show was to be the backdrop for my exhibition. A way to highlight the question I was posing: “Is it possible to make something new?”

The title “The century is drawing to its close” was Vesna’s idea, and it is a quote from the film “Dangerous Liaisons”.

We were in 1990. At the entrance of the last decade of the 20th Century.
The time to sum up and forecast the new... I wanted to talk about that: Past and Future.

Styling is like curating. Back then, totally intuitively, I was “curating” through the anti-fashion show... through the pastiche and collage of garments from the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s...
I raided the closets of my parents and all my friends' parents and relatives, assembling a huge amount of garments and accessories with which we played during the shootings with Vesna... For months we were going to abandoned factories in the harbour of Belgrade, or other creepy buildings in the Old Town taking photos. Vesna was just at the beginning of her career as a photographer.

My idea for the fashion show was that everything is “show”... everything is “fashion”... what models were wearing, as well as what the audience wore... It was all the “time” behind us.

The show was held in the Great Hall of the SCC, a venue that regularly hosted rock concerts, theatre plays, fashion presentations and other public events. Still, I didn’t want a stage, a runway, anything that would create a divide between those looking and those being looked at.

The show started with Grace Jones’ “Amado Mio” in a totally dark space. The audience was standing in the centre of the hall, models came out in the dark, mingled among the crowd, took their positions... and then the spotlights were turned on. Models and people found themselves together under the showers of light... The moment after they were all moving chaotically into or away from the illuminated spots. Models were my closest friends: Ana Krsmanović, Ana Fajgelj, Jelena Begović, Duška Čavić, Teodora Jelić, Lara Pandurović, Sanja Pulejković... The audience was our friends too, so-called “ekipa”, urban youth of the post-New-Wave Belgrade.

A year later, a civil war will start. Yugoslavia was no more.
We, as an emerging generation, lost our future... generations of my parents lost their past.