Japanese Fashion Now Exhibition “Japanese Fashion Now,” opened at the Sava promenade at Kalemegdan on Sunday, September 25, 2011 at 6pm. The exhibition was opened by the U.S. Ambassador to Serbia Mary Warlick, Ambassador of Japan Toshio Tsunozaki, director of PE `Belgrade Fortress` Ivana Lučić Todosić and Mirjana Prošić Dvornić, PhD (Professor Northwood University Midland, Michigan, USA).

The exhibition was prepared by Valerie Steele PhD, director and curator of the Museum at Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York, chief editor of the “Fashion Theory” and author of a number of books and articles about the phenomenon of fashion. The original exhibition was held in New York from fall 2008 to spring 2009 and it contained authentic items.

The first part of the exhibition presents famous Japanese fashion designers who have left a visible mark in the development of haute couture in the last few decades of the twentieth and early twenty-first century, while the second part is dealing with the street fashion of youth, which is typical of modern Japan. This phenomenon occurred during 90s, when the economic recession began slowly to destroy the established order and a strong social structure in which men played the dominant role. In accordance with another feature of Japanese society, inherited from the time of the accepted behavior, young people today have a strong need to visually demonstrate their own existence, sameness toward inside and difference toward the outside, in order to facilitate inter-and intragroup communication.

The exhibition was organized by the PE “Belgrade Fortress” in cooperation with the Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade, as part of an international conference In Between – European Clothing between East and West, organized by the Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade, which is also the host of the meeting of the ICOM (International Council of Museums) Costume Committee.

The exhibition is opened by October 15, 2011.