Exhibition concept: Maja Arčabić
Exhibition design: Bilić_Müller Design Studio
Poster design: Bilić_Müller Design Studio
Ambassador of Fashion, an exhibition from the Zagreb Trades cycle, deals with the history of one of the best-known Zagreb fashion salons, which modiste Žuži Jelinek ran for a full four decades. Thanks to the proprietress keeping a close eye on the trends in fashions, and regularly adding her own personal, distinctive touch to them, the salon became part of the Zagreb fashion tradition, of the dressmaking or tailoring trade and of clothing retailing.
The exhibition is divided conceptually into two topic units, each of which is treated chronologically and presented separately. The first relates to the organisation of the work in the dressmaking salon, the production of garments, the relations with clients, the way in which fashion styles were adopted and put on the market. The other unit relates to Žuži Jelinek's collaboration with the domestic textile and ready-to-wear industry, which started in the mid-1950s, at the time when this branch of industry knew a sudden boom. Her creations of models for big factory runs had an indubitable affect on the democratisation of fashion and changed the fashion scene beyond recall, for the exclusive lines of a renowned salon thus became available to a wider circle of consumers, at far more moderate prices.
In this way, organising well-received fashion shows in the big cities of the world, Žuži Jelinek became the first modern dressmaker to promote the Croatian textile industry and off-the-peg industry abroad. At the end of the 1950s Žuži Jelinek was the first to show her designs at shows abroad – going round Europe, the USA and the Far East. While the foreign press called here “the best known fashion creator from behind the Iron Curtain”, a newspaper article published in the weekly Globus in 1960 justifiably called her an “ambassadress of fashion”.
Maja Arčabić
Pictures from the exhibition
photo Miljenko Gregl, ZCM
Exhibition catalogue
Arčabić, Maja. Žuži Jelinek : Ambassador of Fashion.
Zagreb : Zagreb City Museum, 2008
