NIKOLA EFTIMOV
Nikola Eftimov, a/w 2013-14
Photo: Viktor Naumovski
Producer, styling consultant, hair & make up: Lidia Mincev
Model: Elena Gugoska
Nikola Eftimov (born on October 6th, 1968, in Skopje, Yugoslavia, now in the Republic of North Macedonia) is a Macedonian fashion designer and visual artist. His father, Gjorgji Eftimov, was Macedonian, and his mother, Melita Eftimova née Hubak, was of Croatian, Austrian, Czech, Slovenian, and Jewish descent. Nikola's name honors his paternal grandfather, Nikola Eftimov.
Nikola was baptized in 1969 at the Church of St. Anthony of Padua in Zagreb. He has an older brother, Andrej Eftimov, and a younger sister, Jasmina Chadikovska née Eftimova.
During his childhood, Nikola Eftimov split his time between Skopje and Zagreb, which he fondly remembers as a fairytale experience. His frequent trips to Zagreb exposed him to high culture from an early age, including visits to cultural institutions such as the Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters, Modern Gallery, Archeological Museum, and Art Pavilion. Growing up with an ethnically diverse background, Nikola developed into a tolerant and cosmopolitan individual with a strong moral compass, a multitude of interests, and a wealth of inspiring stories.
Nikola Eftimov hails from a family with a proud history of pharmacists, medical professionals, artists, landowners, and bankers in recent generations. His father, Gjorgji Eftimov, was a prominent figure in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry of ex-Yugoslavia. He founded Jaka 80-Radovish, a pharmaceutical and cosmetics giant, and played a pivotal role in its success.
Nikola Eftimov's first cousin once removed is the renowned primadonna Milka Eftimova, who boasts an impressive international career and is widely regarded as a Macedonian cultural ambassador to the world. Additionally, Nikola's first cousins include the theatre director Sinisha Evtimov and his sister, the esteemed ballet dancer Sasha Evtimova.
Nikola Eftimov showed a natural talent for drawing and a keen interest in visual art and fashion design from an early age. His parents recognized his potential and supported his desire to pursue studies in these fields, investing in his education and providing him with the necessary materials, books, and resources.
Nikola Eftimov earned a degree in Graphic Art and Fashion Design from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Skopje in 1993. Later, he pursued his master's studies at the Accademia Italiana in Florence, Italy, specializing in "Fashion as Art" and focusing on "The Eccentric Male Costume in the Last Three Centuries." Nikola's education provided him with a strong foundation in both graphic art and fashion design, enabling him to develop his unique style and approach to his work.
From 1992 to 2024, Nikola Eftimov dedicated his career to fashion and costume design. He is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of Macedonian fashion design and fashion design education, having trained many well-known fashion designers on both the local and international scene. In 2003, Nikola debuted his male underwear collection, Lezzet, which was the first of its kind by a Macedonian designer. The following year, he was awarded the "Designer of the Year 2003" award by the media and the public through phone voting, recognizing his outstanding contributions to the field.
Nikola Eftimov's talent and creativity were recognized once again in 2005 when he won the "Coca-Cola Light Fashion Design Award." As a result of this distinction, he was able to showcase his winning design in Florence and was offered a position as a lecturer at CIDI Bangkok from 2005 to 2006, which was facilitated by Accademia Italiana Florence. Nikola's success in winning this prestigious award further solidified his position as a prominent figure in the Macedonian fashion design industry.
In 2007, Nikola Eftimov returned to Bangkok to conduct a seminar for the fashion students of the newly opened seat of Accademia Italiana Thailand. After completing this engagement, he returned to his native country to continue his career in design and teaching. Nikola's passion for his craft and his commitment to sharing his knowledge and expertise with aspiring designers continue to be driving forces in his life and career.
After working as an academic manager and lecturer at Accademia Italiana Skopje from 2006 to 2009, Nikola Eftimov began teaching at the Faculty for Art and Design at the European University Skopje in October 2009. He went on to teach at several other institutions, including the American University of Europe - FON, Evro-Balkan Institute, and others. Currently, Nikola is a lecturer at the International Fashion Institute Izet Curi, bringing his wealth of knowledge and experience to a new generation of aspiring fashion designers.
Nikola Eftimov has a diverse range of professional interests, including fashion as art, fashion as communication, the theory and history of costume and fashion, experimental fashion techniques, men's wear, the theory of collection, haute couture, and photography. His work is focused on research into gender, cultural, and social issues related to costume and fashion. Nikola's broad range of interests and expertise allow him to approach fashion design from a unique perspective, incorporating research and critical analysis into his creative process.
Early in his career, Nikola Eftimov demonstrated a strong interest in recycling, reuse, and ethical fashion. He has always been committed to putting these principles into practice, incorporating them into his personal design philosophy. Nikola's dedication to sustainable and ethical fashion has been a driving force throughout his career, motivating him to find innovative ways to reduce waste and promote responsible consumption in the fashion industry.
Nikola Eftimov participated in several group exhibitions of graphic art and drawing between 1994 and 1997. In 1997, he participated in "Macedonian Drawing '96" and was awarded by the National and University Library Skopje for his work. These early exhibitions allowed Nikola to showcase his talent and creativity to a wider audience and helped establish his reputation as a rising star in the art and fashion design world.
Nikola Eftimov, capture taken at the fashion show in Florence, 2005
Nikola Eftimov, Nikola’s paternal grandfather (1913, Toronto, Canada - 1991, Skopje, R. Macedonia), 1930s
Zlata Hubak (née Schenk; maternal grandmother of Nikola Eftimov), the late 1930s, "Foto Gojmerac", Zagreb. Her role was pivotal in inspiring Nikola to become a fashion designer.
Milka Eftimova with Prof. Giorgio Favaretto performing in Siena, Italy, 1966
Nikola Eftimov as a baby in Zagreb, with his older brother Andrej, some aunts and cousins, 1969
Nikola Eftimov with his sister Jasmina Chadikovska née Eftimova and some models, after his first fashion show in 1992
Some of the logo designs and labels that Nikola Eftimov used throughout his career
DISCOVERING
NIKOLA EFTIMOV
(With thanks to Lidia Mincev, for exposing through her clothes the prodigious oeuvre of Nikola Eftimov)
If camouflage is the art of not being seen and therefore not being understood, then spezzatura is its mirror inversion. It refers to a state of extreme visibility that should lead to comprehension but instead simply confounds recognition. An example; the Japanese taste for kawaii, a style that draws on kid’s manga and anime and it is readily identifiable because of its almost saccharine embrace of infantilism associated with the demographic now known as the ‘tweenies’. Kawaii is most frequently translated in English as “cuteness’. However this understanding is completely misleading in its non-dialectical simplicity. Typically, a Kawaii fan will wear, say, a pink cashmere cardigan over a light blue Sailor Moon T-shirt with a large pastel hair ribbon, but crucially, this outfit will be set off against grunge-cut Levi’s, a studded leather belt and S&M stilettos. This is a sophisticated form of cultural brokerage sourced in the desire to confuse cultural assumptions and defy any simple reading of the effects that are willfully projected. These projections achieve what so many counter-cultural styles attempt. They say to the (older) spectator something like; “you think you understand me, but in reality you have no idea. I am (and will always be) hipper than you can ever imagine because you are old and I am young”.
This attitude may appear to us as quintessentially modern but it is not. From time immemorial it has been associated with groups that wish, for whatever reasons, to outflank those around them. Gay sub cultures such as the infamous Macaroni of the late Eighteenth Century up to the voguers of the ‘eighties have frequently adopted styles that mix and match in ways that disturb mainstream assumptions about such things as dress codes. They have not been alone; Hipsters, Beats, Mods, and Punks have all appropriated and re-coded mainstream themes, textures and forms.
Eftimov has acknowledged a debt to the Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier in which the principal virtue of the accomplished courtier, sprezzatura, is defined as "a certain nonchalance, (designed to) conceal all art…” This reads very much like a renaissance equivalent of cool; an attitude of seeming indifference in the face of incomprehension or even hostility. It is the attitude of the dandy or the hipster, visible while at the same time distant. Eftimov works by scrambling codes, by sampling and scratching, by plundering and (mis)appropriation.
Our first impression of Eftimov’s work might very well be a sense of flamboyant textual display; a desire for “both/and” rather than “either/or” as the American architect Robert Venturi put it in his defining text on the emergent postmodernism of the later 1960’s. Eftimov’s work is defiantly anti-classical which, in the fashion world, is to say anti-Parisian.
It is this Baroque desire to embrace difference that has united such varied projects as Eftimov’s Recycled Shadows-Harajuku Flea Market 24/7, Hong Kong Express and The Family Reunion collections. His work is inspired by those moments at which cultural styles intersect and inform each other; he has little respect for a minimalist or mean spirited aesthetic based on the easy assumption that “less is more”. Mixing, matching and overlaying clearly interest him more than, say, some Platonic quest for pure form or expression. As a result his work is marked by a kind of aesthetic generosity of spirit that suggests that his clothing will continue to reveal its secrets over time.
Eftimov’s work makes visible a kind of post-gendered body that is revealed, disguised, complemented and constrained and all of this often in the one garment. In this sense he is heir to the greatest designer of the late Twentieth Century who bequeathed to fashion a license to ignore the dictates of silhouette and contour and instead to treat garments as entities with an existence and purpose independent of a traditional role as a kind of surrogate membrane or skin. Like Macqueen, Eftimov grants material its own autonomy- he gives it permission to work with the body at certain moments and independently, or even in contradiction to, that body at other moments.
In doing this he reveals what has perhaps been the fashion world’s best kept secret since Poiret abolished the corset and it is this; We choose and wear clothes not to complement our own bodies (which each and every one of us is trained to live in uncomfortably) but rather to substitute for this fragile armature a kind of social prosthesis; a body without organs. Eftimov’s garments suggest that we need feel no guilt in embracing the pleasures of clothing cut adrift from its traditional role as nothing more than a kind of scaffolding to that strange and elusive armature that we call our body.
Dr David McNeill, Art Historian, Educator, Associate Director-Centre for Contemporary Art & Politics, NIEA, University of New South Wales
Nikola Eftimov, the winning design of the Coca-Cola light fashion design competition, 2005