Nonna Handmade – When Tradition and Modernity Combine in Ribasevina, Magic Happens

They turn love into art and their hobby into a business. They prove that the combination of traditional crafts and modern manufacturing, as well as Ribasevina and Vracar, is possible indeed. They make up the Nonna Handmade team which is becoming popular among true fashion aficionados with its modern dresses with woven Serbian motifs from the 19th century, unusual velvet skirts with pockets featuring woven ethnic motifs of eastern Serbia and female and male shirts featuring motifs of Vojvodina folk costumes.

That is only part of the magic that is created at the family enterprise workshop Nonna Handmade, which continues the tradition through what is already a fourth generation now. The vision of Nonna Handmade is to preserve part of the cultural non-material heritage through a combination of the traditional and the modern in ideas and production processes and make their products desirable and available to everybody who wants to own a unique product, honoring the quality of the materials and the manufacture, reveals Jelisaveta Milojevic in her conversation with the eKapija portal.

– Four years ago, my aunt and mother got the idea, as the third generation, to put the grandfather and grandmother’s machines, looms and embroidery hoops back into operation and thereby launch the Nonna lifestyle concept as a modern product which is made using old production and craft techniques. In addition to the family, the Nonna Handmade team consists of top experts in their fields: design, construction and modeling professors, academy-trained painters, as well as skilled weavers, embroiderers and craftsmen. The Nonna team consists of around ten women who turn their love into art and their hobby into a business – Jelisaveta reveals.

It is precisely the combination of traditional crafts and modern manufacturing, the old and the modern, that sets apart Nonna Handmade from others, our interviewee believes. Weavers, embroiderers and seamsters in the village of Ribasevina in western Serbia work together with experienced textile, construction and design engineers who are located in a modern studio in Belgrade.

– It is precisely that that makes Nonna Handmade products more than special – they are exclusive because they are made in a special way, using handiwork techniques combined with modern ones and with maximum attention, not just in sewing or modeling, but also in working on details such as hand-made belts, crocheted buckles, woven straps or braids which are a recognizable detail of Serbian folk costumes. You will feel special wearing Nonna products which took hours, often days, to make – Milojevic explains.

Clothes which evoke memories and emotions

In addition to clothes, this studio with a soul, as its founders call it, also offers home products – Nonna Home. The products lean on old ethnographic cultural heritage shown through sketches of academy-trained painters and textile design professors who are a permanent art of the Nonna Handmade team.

– The quality natural materials used for the making of Nonna products, such as silk, cotton and linen, enable a longer use, and the combination of nature and tradition make the person and the space equipped with our products feel prestigious and elevated, but also evocative of memories and emotions – Milojevic notes.

The purchasers are people who appreciate hand-made products, but also people of Serbian origin who live abroad, as well as representatives of foreign embassies and companies which operate in Serbia. What they have in common is that they have style and taste, our interviewee says. Also, they know that Nonna products convey emotions and send messages because nearly every motif deployed carries with it a certain symbolism, present for centuries now through the beliefs of our people.

– For example, when you are gifting a woven picture or pillows with the Pirot motifs of an open turtle, you are in fact gifting a symbol of a long life and good energy, or, if you are gifting a hand-woven braid, you are in fact gifting the Serbian “soul guardian”, which protects the person who wears it from hexes, evil eyes, but also keeps the person safe. Of course, each of our products comes with a certificate of uniqueness, because we are a brand that has been protected at the Institute for Intellectual Property of the Republic of Serbia – Milojevic emphasizes.

Nonna Unica collection – Combination of Italy and Serbia

At the invitation of Confindustria, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary in Serbia this year, Nonna Handmade studio recently launched Nonna Unica, a collection inspired by medieval Serbian and Italian motifs. For a full three months, they worked on innovative solutions, procurement of materials, graphics and XVI century Florentine tapestry schemes, compatible with our Pirot and Kosovo motifs.

– For us, the ovations of the audience which consisted of over a hundred Italian business people and diplomats from the Embassy of Italy in Belgrade meant that we had passed the test and that we now had an obligation to develop further and dedicate ourselves to the Nonna lifestyle concept. I honestly believe that true values never go out of fashion, and when, on top of that, you are praised by business people from a country which is such a fashion center as Italy is, you know you’re on the right path – says Milojevic, who is also the author of the Nonna Unica collection.

After finishing her studies at the LSE (London School of Economics), our interviewee plans to attend luxury branding master studies in Italy. According to her, she intends to turn the sophisticated and modest Nonna into a luxury brand “Made in Serbia”. Also, her goal is to bring Nonna closer to younger generations.

– My mission, as a member of the fourth generation in our family, is to bring the Nonna Lifestyle concept closer to younger generations through digital media in order to make it globally visible, but also desirable, and to raise awareness among the young that it is IN to wear a woven XIX motif on a modern dress and that it is socially responsible to wear a handmade product made from natural materials and that, in a world of overall uniformity and globalism, it’s valuable to be special and unique – our interviewee concludes.

M. Dedic

Nonna Handmade Užice

Konfindustrija Srbija

Nonna Handmade

Confindustria

Jelisaveta Milojević

luxury brand

luxury clothes

fashion

tradition

Nonna Unica

Nonna Home

fashion collection

cultural non material heritage

old crafts

Ribaševina

studio in Ribaševina

weavers

unique products