INTERVIEW with Katarina Matijevic, Serbian fashion designer in Paris

Hey hey again!

I’m back with a new blog post and with something I have never done before! An interview!!! I have always loved reading interviews, or even being the one interviewed (although I was interviewing myself in my head, but oh well haha).

I am so so so happy and grateful to present you Katarina! Katarina comes from Serbia and she is a Paris based womenswear designer. Her brand goes by the name Tvvin. As she says, Tvvin stands for duality within design and an individual, whose focus is the intention to bring ease and comfort to the wearer.

I N T E R V I E W

Q: Describe yourself in one sentence

A: Balance of constancy and change

Q: What inspired you to do fashion design?

A: The feeling that you can give to and get from - a piece of garment.
Also, my dad.
He used to buy a lot of interior design and decor magazines that we would flip through together, day and night. At first, I developed a huge passion for architecture and interior design. Then it kind of moved on to fashion, my dad was always into it. He was the only person I loved going shopping with.
Also, my parents were the owners of the first sportswear shop in our hometown.
I listened to a lot of stories (I wasn’t born at that time) about how they did it and why. My dad was always talking to me about colours, fabrics and the relationship they had with customers, but also the relationship customers had with the products. It’s completely different point of view on fashion if you are in sales and if you go to a fashion / art school. I happen to get the best of both worlds!

Q: What would you like to achieve with your work?

A: To give comfort and security of a home onto a wearer - through the garment

Q: Where do you find inspiration?

A: Psichology, poetry, fine arts, sculpture and furniture design.
Observing all of these together, they represent a certain atmosphere and emotion to which I react during the process of working on a collection.
First rule is to observe, the second rule is to act on it.
In between - it’s like a play of the passive and active side of my personality, with a lot of empathy included.

Q: Tell me something about your last collection?

A: FW19 Collection named „The Act of Absence“ is inspired by a feeling of absence being more striking than presence. It actually came from a situation I found myself to be in, shortly after my arrival to Paris. I always felt like something or someone was missing even if I achieved everything I wanted by that point and was very happy to open a new chapter in my life and work on a new collection.

I guess we’ve all felt like that at one point of our lives, no matter what or who was missing. And it’s only human to feel this way, to be in this internal state of mind, to not feel enough by being yourself. It’s a very common trigger for depression and anxiety within people of my age that should be spoken about.
The goal of the collection was to react on this feeling of discomfort and make it „leap“ into something positive. Transforming it into a collection that will show vunerability of the wearer as a streingth and not as a negative trait.

photofraphy: Jana Anđić / model: Sara Bošković / Paris 2019

Q: Which designers you find as the most inspirational?

A: Alber, Alber, Alber! Alber Elbaz!

He is such an inspiration on so many levels for me.
Mostly because of his point of view on life, fashion and society, that is enrichened with his unique sense of humour. He is a designer with a strong intellectual point of view in fashion and applies it on his designs with such ease and beauty – which for me represents the true essence of fashion.

“I have a feeling that’s maybe the one thing that scares me the most, I always feel that ‘ugly is the new beautiful.’ I’m not into that, I feel that beautiful is beautiful… maybe ugly is a reflection of the times, so I’m not surprised there is so much ugliness.”

Alber Elbaz, Interview at Parsons School of Design, 2016

I have this feeling too, Alber.

Q: Which brand would you like to work for?

A: By previously mentioning Alber, I think it’s quite obvious it would be Lanvin.
I think the brand has entered a new era, quite unstable at the beginning – but I feel the puzzle is finally coming together with each collection. And it’s quite my cup of tea of the aesthetics and creative universe that Bruno Sialelli is serving us.
Besides Lanvin, I wish to work for Jil Sander, Loewe, The Row, Ann Demeulemeester, Lemaire, and Proenza Schouler. The list goes on, but I will stop here.

Q: What advice would you give to your younger self?

A: - Work, but don’t forget to play.
- It’s not the collection of your life, nor the last one you will make. - Please don’t overanalyse, just go after your instincts.

photography: Nemanja Taneski / models: Maja Ristić & Ivana Aničić / Belgrade 2018

Q: Where do you see women in design world in the future?

A: I feel that there is no great disbalance in fashion when it comes to gender equality. We live in times when there is a place for everyone.
Forgive me if I am mistaken, but I will blame it on my dreamy and naïve bubble that I sometimes still live in.

Q: What is the meaning of life?

A: “To improve is to change, to perfect is to change often” - Winston Churchill
I believe in change. And to be the best version of yourself in a given time is the goal. If you can do that, you will for sure leave behind a legacy that will surpass you as a human being made out of physical components.
It’s really not about the material world, it’s about the spirit that continues to live. It might sound kind of paradoxical speaking as someone who is designing products, but for me fashion is more than just things. It’s the message that’s being sent through it.

Kind of like poetry.

Speaking of poetry... LOVE!

With this we are finishing this interview and I will highly recommend to visit Katarina’s pages to see more of her work:

https://tvvvin.tumblr.com

https://www.notjustalabel.com/tvvvin?

https://www.instagram.com/tvvvin/

Have a lovely evening everybody and see you soon!

Love, Ena

Berlin Art Week 2019

Welcome to today’s topic: BERLIN ART WEEK!

It’s a quite chilly day in Berlin and I am drinking my oat milk latte, so Berlin haha. It’s been a few days since the Berlin Art Week has officially closed its doors for this year. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t visit most of the exhibitions that took part.

September is as I like to call it an Art Month, even though a lot of events still happen even throughout October. But let’s talk about the Art Week!

Every year for about 5 days there is a week that has so many exhibition openings that you can only try to see them all. Usually I would pick a few and slowly visit them, but this year I really tried to see as many as possible, and then I ended up having as I called an “art overload”. Just kidding, that is almost impossible, but the amount of art pieces I have seen during these few days was really admiring I have to say. Galleries and museums all over the city are opening their doors for art enthusiasts. There were several openings each day and we’d have to stop time in order to see them all! Apart from galleries and museums, there were numerous installations all around Berlin. With years I have to say I began to appreciate installations more and more, and especially those that are done as some sort of an urban intervention that everyone can see while walking around, going to work, commuting or just stepping out of their house. 

In this post I will show some of my favourite exhibitions and art pieces! 

One of my favourite exhibition spaces is for sure KINDL Zentrum für Zeitgenössische Kunst. The space itself leaves you speechless, but the choice of artists that exhibit there never leaves you indifferent. 

Am Sudhaus 3, 12053 Berlin

Next on the list is most definitely Hamburger Bahnhof. An old station that is now an amazing museum offers different exhibitions at the same time. The art that is shown is mostly contemporary and from time to time there are also live performances included. Since the location of the museum is in Mitte, very central, and not more than 3 minutes walking distance from the central train station Hauptbahnhof, this museum for sure is a must to whoever visits Berlin!

Invalidenstraße 50-51, 10557 Berlin

After being in an art-architecture world for a while now, Bauhaus has a special place in my heart! This year, 2019, is actually a 100y since the movement has been founded! During the year there have been several exhibitions that showed pieces from this movement, regarding art, design, architecture, even photography (even though lots of photographers don’t even know that Bauhaus plays a big role in our world as well, not just in architecture and design!) Berlinische Galerie (Alte Jakobstraße 124-128, 10969 Berlin) as one of the main and biggest galleries in the city has exhibited pieces from this movement. For the first time I have seen that people are actually standing in a line and waiting for something cultural and not clubs, iPhones and stuff like that. 

When speaking of Bauhaus, it’s inevitable to mention Gropius Bau Museum. Martin Gropius who is a founder of the museum was a grandson of Walter Gropius, one of the founders of Bauhaus movement. Gropius Bau Museum is one of my favourite buildings in Berlin and the feeling I get every time I go there is just pure bliss! As museum is pretty big, and it has lots of space, often there are at least 3 different exhibitions, and that was the case this time as well!

Niederkirchnerstraße 7, 10963 Berlin

After mentioning big guys, I have to talk about my absolute favourite gallery, that has always left me speechless and full of some certain of very special indescribable feeling: Museum Frieder Burda Berlin which is located in the “art street” Auguststraße. One of the photographic projects that I found as the most powerful that I have seen in a long time is being exhibited there. Photographer Olaf Heine and Rwanda Daughters is for sure an experience everybody has to go through if they are in Berlin while its on display! (If you are reading this and you are in Berlin please go and see it!) 

Auguststraße 11 - 13, 10117 Berlin

And last but not least, Art Fair that was held on the Tempelhofer Feld and inside the abandoned airport. Hangars 5 and 6 hosted numerous galleries and you could see art buyers, gallerists and enthusiasts walking around, having meetings one after the other. I am currently not running a gallery but I for sure enjoyed this fair so much. It was such an inspirational experience!

Since this post has became so long, I am just going to list some other galleries and museums I find very interesting to visit: Me Collectors Room, Akademie der Künste, C/O (will talk about this one more in a specially dedicated post), König Galerie, Auguststraße (street full of galleries!)

Thank you for reading this and I promise there is a lot of very interesting content including interviews with stimulating people coming!

Have a lovely day!
Ena :)