LITTLE SECRETS OF A BIG CITY Belgrade chic throughout the centuries Did you know that the territory of today’s Serbian capital used to be occupied by a city that was the prehistoric cradle of European fashion? I t was seven thousand years ago that a city of the ancient Vinča civilisation occupied the ter- ritory of today’s Serbian capital. One of the first metropolises of prehistoric Europe; the capital of the Old Continent, millennia before the es- tablishment of the European Union – it was a kind of Stone Age Brussels. Vinča women would “stroll” these parts in two-piece linen outfits with a V-shaped neck- line, miniskirts and knee-high socks, which we still wear today. This is confirmed by figurines discovered in Vinča, which shocked the archaeology world with their beauty. Visit the White Hill Archaeological Site in Vinča, home to the museum that preserves this ar- chaeological legacy of global importance. Thousands of years later, when Vinča became Bel- grade, occupying the crossroads between East and West and the border separating two great empires, the Otto- man and the Austrian, the fashion on the streets faith- fully followed the historical and geopolitical cycles of the West. One record from the 19 th century claims: “Belgrade is Constantinople’s last bazaar and Vienna’s first east- ern armoury”. As Serbia liberated itself from Turkish occupation, so it shed the turbans, but kept the fezzes. Those emancipation processes represented a long Eu- ropean journey, and they weren’t accepted overnight. Testifying to the then Serbia having followed world fashion is Serbian educator Dositej Obradović. He headed to Paris wearing çakşır trousers and a fez, only to return Beograd je bio poslednji bazar Carigrada i prvi magazin Beča prema Istoku Belgrade was Constantinople’s last bazaar and Vienna’s first eastern armoury
in 1808, for the opening of the Great School that was the precursor to the University of Belgrade, dressed accord- ing to the latest European trend - in the so-called Em- pire Style of the Napoleonic era, in a frockcoat and sport- ing a hat on his head. The Belgrade bazaar was rendered speechless. The same thing happened with the young Vuk Karadžić in 1816, when he came back from Vienna to gather folk songs. It sounds silly to suggest that Dositej Obradović and Vuk Karadžić were our first trendsetters, but that’s how Europe started paying visits to the then Belgrade of the Orient. Serbs educated abroad brought home some piece of Europe, whether that be from cul- ture, fashion or furniture. The first Serbian lady to embrace Viennese and Pa- risian fashion was Anka Obrenović, daughter of Duke Miloš’s brother Jevrem Obrenović. This led to her be- ing nicknamed ‘Anka the fashionable’. At a time when girls in Serbia didn’t even attend school, Anka was the most educated woman in the Balkans. She published the first book of translated German stories in our country. The Biedermeier period was at its peak in Europe dur-
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