IT WAS a photographer's dream assignment. Beautiful women wearing beautiful clothes against the backdrop of a blitzed city, burned out cars and UN, armoured vehicles. The fashion, shoot for one of Sarajevo's new companies happened last spring when the snipers were still doing their own shooting.
Six weeks ago the same fledgling company, Fashion Made In Sarajevo (FMIS), opened its first shop in a small gallery called Leonardo. It looks like any boutique in Dublin or Paris. The operation was set up a year ago by a German aid agency and FMIS was registered as a commercial venture three months ago.
Amna Kunovic, the 26 year old Sarajevan designer who runs it has plans beyond short term humanitarian relief. She hopes to export the clothes to Germany and beyond. "With that we can employ more and more people and that is our main aim," she says.
The agency employs 15 people now. Most are refugees or women whose husbands were killed in the war. The workshop is one of only two manufacturers left in the city making civilian clothes. All the others make military uniforms, says Amna.
She uses the military theme of buckles and straps in rich velvets and wools. "I tried to comment on some things going on here. This military level is a view of the situation . . . and I tried to connect it with modern fashion."
When the shop first opened they had a rush of customers, although business has now levelled off. By Sarajevan standards the clothes are expensive, but well within reach of a young Berliner's budget.
Amna studied industrial design at the Sarajevo Academy until 1993. She is still working on her graduation project; the war got in the way. Until September last year she worked on anti war posters and made bags and hats.
"I had to work on them, or mentally I would die," she said. The winter was the worst, when it got dark early.
"We would have to go to bed at 7 p.m. and get up at 5 a.m., as if we lived in a village," she said.
The material for her first collection came from the German agency. "We prepared the collection in very bad circumstances," she says. "I was always afraid to call people to work in case something happened."
She does not like to think about the possibility that the peace in Sarajevo is temporary. "A lot of journalists who come here only saw blood and destruction and people dying."
Like the model in the promotional photographs people dressed themselves to stand out, from the desolation around them, she says.
"You didn't have freedom in anything else so at least you had the freedom to look good and feel normal. It was a kind of psychological resistance. It was instinctive."
