Multifunctional Reality of Fashion Embrace

“Multifunctional Reality of Fashion Embrace” by Sonja Jocic, invites the audience to peek into their wardrobes, separate and bring their unnecessary, preserved, and washed pieces of clothing, and come to the exhibition to hand them out for those who need those clothes the most, or take the ones they need. On the stand, they will have the opportunity to find several pieces of clothing from the author’s old collection, as well as several preserved commercial pieces of clothing that are brought by the participants. The interactive stand will remain as part of the permanent exhibition of the Zornić House complex, and the idea is to continue the project after the festival.

At a time when the world is forced to physical distance due to a pandemic, we realized that we need the embrace of nature and the most beloved. The body and the clothes are, figuratively speaking, in a relationship that is like a hug. The realization of the idea consists of performing an interactive point, a stand with discarded things, where visitors can bring unnecessary clothes, appropriate the necessary, similar to figuratively finding or giving hugs, to hug gratitude by nature, with visual examples (video and photos) multifunctional restyling to help actors interact to change perception – find new clothing options, develop creativity and change the angle of observation, which helps the psyche to get rid of repressed problems.

Modern consumer society strives for mass production and consumption to achieve its functional needs, but above all the needs of a psychological nature for the apparent personal satisfaction caused by the influence of the media as a life goal and trend. Planet Earth is on a challenging task of survival due to a large amount of waste and pollution caused by the actions of all humanity, while the power of change lies in the change of consciousness by knowing the problem and the possibility of solutions, by each individual.

The project aims to encourage the awareness of the global consumer society of changes in the field of fashion to preserve the environment and protect the future of the planet Earth from excessive production, consumption, and rejection of clothing. At the level of the individual consumer, consciousness can change by changing the perception of everyday clothing, finding new multiple functions in the rejected through encouraging individual creativity, recognizing the unlimited possibilities of clothing styling, as well as revealing and empowering new emotional values in the unnecessary – rejected.

Sonja Jocic is a second-year doctoral student (since 2019) at the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade, where she is researching sustainability through the multifunctionality of contemporary clothing. She completed a Master’s of Fine Arts, with a specialization in fashion design at the “Swedish School of Textiles” in Borås, Sweden (2014). Before earning her master’s degree, she graduated in fashion and textile design, at the Department of Textile School of Design, Technology, and Management at the Academy of Technical and Artistic Vocational Studies, in her hometown of Belgrade (2010), where she currently works as a teaching assistant.

Photographs Ana Osk i Djordje Tomic