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Slavna Martinovic is a costume designer and theorist of dress and subculture. Her work in visual arts is a symbiotic dance between theatre, film, music videos, and fashion. Slavna’s work spans across cities where she grew up and new ones she adopted. In Hong Kong, where she moved with her parents, she absorbed the plural eclectic visual contradictions of Cantopop and punk rock, early raves and high fashion glossies, skyscrapers, and knock-offs, all fueling her undying love for dressing up. She was a devoted club kid and follower of fashion during her studies at the London College of Fashion, delighting in every minute of the '90s nightlife, embodying dress as a way of being in the world. She moved to Los Angeles in 1998, where she continued her career in styling for fashion magazines and celebrities, gradually becoming a versatile costume designer under the mentorship of Theodora Van Runkle, the last of the golden era of Hollywood costume designers, who became her mentor and a friend.

 

Slavna continues designing for films, commercials, opera, and theatre She has collaborated with celebrities like Ella Blue Travolta, Jorja Fox, Chloë Sevigny, Famke Janssen, Tori Spelling, Pink, Usher, and bands like Travis and A Perfect Circle. Her editorial and design work has been featured in  fashion magazines such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Vanity Fair, Another Magazine, Flaunt, and GQ. Slavna’s collaborative spirit transcends mediums, forging alliances with directors, choreographers, composers, and musicians.

Her costume designs have graced the stages of Burg Theater, Deutsches Theater, Volksbühne Berlin, Göteborg Opera, Theater Basel, Théâtre National de Chaillot Paris, Taichung Metropolitan Opera House, Spiral Hall in Tokyo, Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam, Konzert Theater Bern, and Ballet Moskva. She has recently completed designing the opera "Carmen" with the famed Berlin-based Argentinian choreographer Constanza Macras.

 

Martinovic's works are not confined to performance and fashion; they inhabit the space of museums and galleries, such as the exhibition "The Costume at the Turn of the Century 1995-2015" at the Bakhrushin State Theater Museum in Moscow, and the Women's Museum in Wiesbaden, Germany.

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Slavna’s sartorial style is guided by the practice of subculture and dress, knowledge of fashion histories, and an appreciation of the beauty of the unexpected, discarded, and the precious, with meticulous effort to produce pieces that transcend both costume and fashion, becoming at times invisible, at times palpable, but always some kind of wonderful. 

 

She is currently a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where she is also a PhD candidate.

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Slavna's research interests are a continuation of her decades-long absorption in dress, fashion, and subculture. She investigates the way the body is transformed, extended, and fashioned in the virtual worlds, exploring the ideas of the digital representation of subcultural styles and identities, the effects of social media on corporal identity, gender performativity, and displaying subversive thinking.

 

Slavna Martinovic was born in Yugoslavia and now lives between Berlin, Vienna, and Los Angeles, or wherever her work may take her.