A Personal History in Black – A Portrait of a Historian in her Youth in Belgrade (1979-1991)

Abstract

This paper originated from a draft and visual presentation for a scientific conference, aiming to relate a personal story as part of the fashion history of the socialist Serbia/Yugoslavia. The approach takes myself both as a witness and a historian, making the narrative inevitably biased, intimate and sentimental. Nevertheless, the presented material evidence (my fashion sketches, personal photographs) and my recollections of the ‘city’ and its ‘heterotopias’ at that time (my map), could serve as valid testimonies to a late socialist way of life. Twelve years may and may not seem like a long period, but those were the formative years of my life, when I pursued and then gave up studying costume and fashion design, choosing the greater certainty in studying history. I have discerned two distinct stages marked by dominant colors – brown childhood versus black and ‘gothic’ youth in high school. Growing up in Tito’s and post-Tito’s Yugoslavia was not without awareness of class differences, social mobility did exist, and I was not significantly limited in school options, since I excelled in my primary school.

I spent my time reading books – belles-lettres and art history, drawing clothing sketches, first for a paper doll Lu, and later for myself, visiting museums and galleries, and observing life in the ‘city’. The enclosed map is a visual representation of what the ‘city’ encompassed in the days of my youth, when I lived in the ‘rurban area’ with ‘edgescapes’ in New Belgrade, marked with heterotopias, many of which no longer exist. My high school was located in the city center, as were all the daytime and nighttime places me and my friends frequented. These places could be called ‘urban’ in the fullest and most exclusive sense, before the term became diluted and derogatory today.

Popular culture grew in influence, and I was able to select the elements of my ‘second skin’, constructing a gothic image as close as possible to the original. The biggest impediments were, besides money, the general lack of black clothing items for women in our shops. The most important signifying pieces – black leather jacket, Dr Martens and creeper Oxford shoes, original Levi’s jeans – were provided by my sister from her trips abroad. The rest of the wardrobe I sewed myself from jersey and silk crepe, since I was attending sewing courses as a part of my preparation for fashion studies. The black colour and gothic image served as a sort of protection from unwarranted approaches, while also reflecting my musical taste and artistic inclinations. Besides post-punk, gothic, then grunge, hardcore and techno/rave American and English bands, as well as a few local ones, much of my personal affinitiy was inspired by literature, from Poe and Baudelaire to Latin American poetry and novels. As a personal (her)story, I hope this text provides testimony to the destruction of a state, society and ‘city’ during the so-called ‘transitional’ process, from liberal socialism to anything but liberal capitalism and consumer society on the eve of ecological collapse. Although this paper may not fully comply with all reviewers’ suggestions, I confess to having disclosed more of my intimate history than I initially thought necessary for this text to be considered a valid and solid contribution in the field of autoethnography.