The 40th Montenegro Fashion Week opened tonight at the Podgorica City Museum with a retrospective exhibition “Tradition in Motion” by Montenegrin fashion designer Marina Banović.
The exhibition was opened by lawyer and influencer Nataša Kovačević, better known as Njezvan.
“I had the honor and pleasure of opening this jubilee Fashion Week at the City Museum, which I consider particularly important for all of us. And I would like to thank the Fashion Chamber of Montenegro and its president, Srđan Lubarda, who made it possible for us to have this cosmopolitan atmosphere, as well as his deputy Marina Banović Džuver – for everything they have done all these years, because we have had the opportunity many times to feel like part of the world, and for the world to hear about our Podgorica and Montenegro,” said Kovačević.
“It’s interesting that I’ve had coffee with this woman, whose appointment I’ll be announcing tonight, many times, and that I learned about this information about her career from her mother, Ljilja. Because we, in the Balkans, were raised to think that speaking in superlatives about ourselves is bad manners,” she said, adding that she would take the opportunity to speak highly of Banović.
“In this exhibition, we have the opportunity to see a piece from her ‘Jelena Savojska’ collection, which was published in Vogue, and for which Jelena Rakočević did the embroidery,” Kovačević highlighted, reminding that Banović was recently part of the Brics Fashion Summit, held in Moscow, and had shows in Sofia, Milan, Paris…
She took the opportunity to emphasize that when organizing Montenegrin Fashion Week, social responsibility is never absent.
“They don’t just deal with how a woman looks, but also who a woman is, how she feels, whether she is healthy… So I would urge you, if you haven’t already, to have your breasts examined, because they are for mammograms, not Instagram,” said Kovačević.
After her, Banović also addressed the audience, “excusing herself” by saying that “she doesn’t know how to speak as well as Kovačević, because she creates much more beautifully.”
“Tonight you will see a display of collections that have been created over the past 20 years, which are inspired by the national costume of first Montenegro and then the region,” Banović explained.
As she said, the models are woven with “the desire, work, effort, hopes, joy, sadness… of all the women who created these pieces of national costumes and fabrics.”
“When I say fabrics, I primarily think of my grandmother who made the hemp from which these models are made. I think of the Rakočević family, who have contributed from the beginning of my work until today, to preserving and implementing in what I do, national embroideries, Montenegrin national costumes. Also of all the ladies I have collaborated with, and from whom I received beautiful parts of national costumes, and entire national costumes that I was later able to implement in what I do and breathe new life into, to be a contemporary piece of clothing today,” described the fashion designer.
As she said, the models on display are not commercial, nor for sale, because she is emotionally attached to them, and they have no value that can be measured in money.
At the opening of the exhibition, as well as the Montenegrin Fashion Week, the president of that event, as well as the Fashion Chamber of Montenegro, Srđan Lubarda, spoke.
“When Marina and I were children, I was involved in organizing various events and while hanging out somewhere, she suggested that I organize Fashion Week. I told her that it was impossible in Montenegro, because we don’t have designers, but she said – let’s go, I’ll be the first… That’s how we started a story that is still with us after 20 years,” Lubarda recalled.
“When we mention Milan Fashion Week or Paris Fashion Week, people don’t know that designers pay huge amounts of money there, and that’s not the case here. We are here to support them, with symbolic prices or free participation, but our partners, socially responsible companies that support us, are always there. The idea, first of all, was Marin’s for the anniversary edition to be on a cultural level in a representative building, but that wouldn’t have been possible without the deputy mayor who came out to meet us and provided support, one of the few who is in a position to support the fashion scene, and this time I will thank her,” he pointed out.
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