It’s not a surprise to anyone that I love editorial fashion. My TikTok page, Instagram feed and magazine subscriptions prove that no doomscroll brings me more joy than one filled with new and exciting collections. Paris Fashion Week is arguably the biggest fashion event of the season, where countless designers, models and celebrities flock to the luxurious streets of France for a chance to be a part of something magical. Cheesy, I know, but true. With that in mind, meet Jelena Kulic. A 23-year-old independent designer from Serbia, who has taken the industry by storm with a breathtaking debut collection of bags at the Opéra Garnier for Paris Fashion Week. I sat down with Kulic for a chat about this debut collection, her sources of inspiration and her overall outlook on fashion, which she views as a form of psychology.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The Michigan Daily: I want to start off by asking you to give a broad introduction to your Paris Fashion Week debut. I know you drew a lot of inspiration from the Renaissance and the Baroque eras, so I’d love to hear about that, and even broader, how this opportunity came to be.
Jelena Kulic: My grandfather is a painter in his free time, so ever since I was little, art was a huge part of me. He would paint these huge pictures that would cover the entire wall, and his main themes would be Renaissance, Baroque and Classical art eras. That was the main source of inspiration. Basically, I’ve always been surrounded by art, and I always appreciated the details and everything that was in that old time. Now, the style is mostly modern, which I do appreciate, but something that I love is the detailing and the craftsmanship that all these people before had to do in order to create something so grand.
My grandfather also likes to research history, so that was also a huge part of my life growing up. I think that was the base of the inspiration, generally for my style and my work. Art and fashion are so dynamic; they’re part of our everyday lives, so I kind of wanted to incorporate the beauty of art and fashion as well and merge it into this. For this debut, as a bag designer, I viewed these bags as a blank canvas. I painted everything by hand, and most of the ornaments that I made were also made by hand. A few of the statues I had to design with people who do 3D printing. In this case, the inspiration was the Opéra Garnier. I wanted to incorporate the energy of the opera and the building itself into the bags.
TMD: I know you collaborated with designers and clothing brands such as Designz by Minaaz and Lauren Lein Designs, to name a few. How did you get to meeting them, and how were you able to use your handbags with their clothing? How did that come to be?
JK: The people who organize Paris Fashion Week picked about 70 designers in total for everything — for clothing, accessories, etc. On the day of the fitting, the stylist helped us with matching each bag with a certain clothing item and making everything harmonious. I did not have any contact with these designers before coming to Paris. Everyone was doing their own thing.
TMD: In terms of the Opéra Garnier, I want to talk about how you found inspiration from it. What about it drew you to that location, and how did you first hear about the opera?
JK: So I think everyone’s dream is to visit Paris, which is filled with art and history. The first time I actually visited Paris was in 2023, so two years ago. I love to visit the opera, and anytime I visit another city, I like to go to their opera or ballet, or something like that; the entire process of going into those buildings is so amazing because, first of all, you have to dress nicely, so everyone is dressed well. Also, the architecture is usually very beautiful, and to see all these people perform makes you really see the effort and the energy they put into their costumes and everything.
I’ve seen the opera on TikTok, but I didn’t really look into it much. When we arrived, I knew I wanted to go there, and when we came, honestly, I was astonished by how amazing it looked. First of all, the exterior of the building itself is absolutely beautiful. It has a statue of Apollo and many statues on the roof itself. As I came into the building, I was absolutely astonished. The hall was so grand and beautiful and so amazingly detailed. I was soaking everything in; it was phenomenal. There is a main hall, a ballroom and the auditorium, so those three rooms are the main ones, but everything was so amazing. I could really look at the energy of the building.
That was in 2023, when I went there to watch the performers and everything. It was absolutely amazing. The guests were all elegantly dressed, and with the costumes on the performers, you can see the effort. I think that was the highlight of my trip to Paris. For my show, when I got the opportunity to draw the sketches and to submit them to the team, I knew that I wanted to do something with France. I wanted to appreciate some part of their culture. I was thinking about something that made a huge impression on me, and the first thing that came to mind was the Opéra Garnier. I was just having flashbacks of the things that I’ve seen, and the entire collection was done in like 15 minutes, because every single room, every single part of the building itself, was so amazing. Every room, every aspect of the opera is different, yet similar in a way. Based on this, every single bag is not the same, but when you look at the entire collection as a whole, you can see the similarities.
More on the inspiration, there’s the book, “The Phantom of the Opera,” and by legend, the Phantom of the Opera actually lived in the Opéra Garnier, so I wanted to incorporate “The Phantom of the Opera” as well in the collection. A few of the bags have references to the book scenes, the movie and the musical, so I wanted to merge all that and have it into a collection called “Evening at the Opera.”
TMD: How did you come to discover your perspective on fashion as a form of psychology? Is there a specific moment in your life or career where you realized that, or when you started changing the way you think about it? Has it influenced your work at all?
JK: I think we all kind of want to evolve and become a better version of ourselves, but sometimes you really have to say it out loud. It’s hard to take that first step, and something that I have realized is that we have to be authentic, which is not an easy thing to do in this day and age. In our early teens, people usually like to blend into crowds, but I realized that the first step was to actually physically become the version of myself that I wanted to be, and fashion is such an easy way to do that. People, especially those who don’t really like fashion, think of clothes as just something that we wear, but it’s a physical representation of what we feel within. I realized that when I wear something that I like and something that aligns with my inner self, that is where I start to gain more and more confidence. When I actually started to do things that I wanted to do and dress how I wanted to dress, I got a push to start being something that I wanted to be. For the perception of self in the psychology of fashion, if we dress a certain way, we physically become something that we want. Fashion can be used as a shield, and it can also give us power. Putting effort into our looks is not something that’s superficial; when we do that, we feel more productive and we feel better. We, in general, as humans, are visual creatures; whether we like it or not, we judge people even subconsciously. Using this can be a really good way to use fashion as a tool to actually perform and feel better.
TMD: Thank you so much, Jelena, for letting me into your creative mind as such a talented, young artist. I just have one question left for you. Is there any sort of future goal, plan or next thing you want to achieve?
JK: I just want to create. I adore art, and the fact that Paris Fashion Week was my debut makes me so grateful, but I just want to create. Maybe in the future I will create clothing, but in general, I just want to create and value authenticity. I got invitations for New York Fashion Week, Milan Fashion Week and other opportunities like a feature in ELLE, because of Paris Fashion Week. It’s a huge honor, but honestly, the main thing for me is to create as an artist and spread the word that people should not be afraid of being themselves. It’s a hard thing to do, but I think that we can all become a lot more comfortable with ourselves, and use tools like fashion to speed things up a little.
Daily Arts Writer Bobby Currie can be reached at bobcur@umich.edu.
