Damir Begovic

Collection EX-vonia inspired by Haute Couture and Slavonian folk costumes. Slavonia is history-geography region located in eastern Croatia (Europe). Slavonia represents granary and agricultural most important part of Croatia.

The decline of my mine native region of Slavonia and migration of people, abandoning a certain way of life and heritage encouraged me in making of this collection. In Croatia, there were three migration waves, first one in the second half of the 19-th century due to downy mildew, the second one after the WW2 because of political-economical reasons, and the third one, that is still happening today, causing migration of young highly educated people also known as the brain drain. The aspects of cultural identity are lost, especially in the second generation of migrants.

The wealth of ethnic culture, clothing, and customs inspired me in the designing of this collection. What's interesting is that almost every village differs from another by some element on the national costume, that fact causes in me the explosion of the inspiration that I included in this collection.

This collection is based on unique techniques, that are closely connected to the Slavonian folk costume and attire. Techniques that I used are gold and silver embroidery, which can be done by hand or on the sewing machine. I used silver embroidery on a hybrid of pelerine and kerchief applying them on precisely chosen spots on the basis of traditional dressing. The golden embroidery I applied on belt/corset piece, which in contrast to the down garment gives even more sent of luxury and meticulousness of produced embroidery. The richness of the embroidery is closely tied to the religion because women in the village were inspired by church dresses in embroidery creating. Most motifs are floral.

The technique of slides I applied on the designed coat and played by the size of the mirrors and protruding leather forms. Technique refers to hand cut leather circles and then by heating them, you get protruding forms.

Also, I designed my own print that shows magnified golden embroidery. The print is based on photographing original folk scarfs.
Furthermore, I designed motive produced in the 3D swelling press way on the textile.

The materials I used in the collection are woolen fabric, velvet, cotton tricot, leather, glass, fur, jersey, tartan, water-resistant polyester.