SAILING AHEAD IN SERBIA
Sailing ahead in Serbia
Designs for the sky, sea and everything else in between
Ivana Domitrović
sition, she started young. Her talents were recognised
before she graduated; an American design firm based out
of Herceg Novi, a coastal town of Montenegro, took her
under their wings where she worked for few years. While
working at the firm she won a prestigious scholarship for
a yacht design masters course in Venice. “I was pretty sure
about my decision to come back to Serbia and start my
own business. During my course, I was in touch with shipyards and engineers back home. And there was a demand
for my kind of work,” she says. Thus came Salt&Water.
Her studio hasn’t restricted themselves to yachts; they do
residential interiors as well.
Svetlana Mojic
Serbia’s Svetlana Mojic is a woman in a predominantly male bastion. She designs the interiors for
yachts and aeroplanes. Her passion for yachts began years ago when she represented Serbia in sailing events across the world. From sailor to owning a
sailing empire (of sorts) could well sum up her career. Not discriminated against yet, Svetlana has had
a good run with the business barring the bureaucracy,
which she does say, gives her a ‘lot of headache’.
Svetlana Mojic was studying Architecture in the Serbian
city of Novi Sad in 2007. Novi Sad, on the banks of the
River Danube, is the second largest city in Serbia. She
was an active sailor and represented her country in international sailing events. It was during her Architecture
course that she realised what she wanted to do with her
life. Svetlana wanted to design the interiors of yachts; she
wanted to weld her passion for sailing and architecture.
This was in 2007. Today, in 2016, she owns a four-member
award-winning studio specialising in interior designing
and external styling of yachts — ‘Salt&Water’.
It might strike as odd for someone to dabble in sailing and
yacht designing in a landlocked country like Serbia. But
Serbia wasn’t landlocked, to begin with. Serbia was a part
of Yugoslavia, which had its own long Adriatic coast. With
the disintegration of Yugoslavia that began in 1990’s the
coastal belt began to shrink. And with the independence
of Montenegro in 2006, the last access to the coast was
lost.
This loss, however, wasn’t going to be a detriment to the
resolute Svetlana. Strong willed and of a cheerful dispoJuly 2016 Edition from continnect.com
m continnect.com B [email protected]
Recognition
The awards first came in from an unexpected quarter. Svetlana designed the interiors of Boeing 787 VIP; the client
liked it so much that he entered her name for the ‘International Yacht & Aviation Awards 2014’. Her two-member
team (later became a four-member team) pipped firms
with several thousands of employees to walk away with
the prize. This was just the beginning. Soon her projects
began to get noticed and she was being recognised for
innovative designs.
Though yachting and sailing is a male stronghold, Svetlana has never faced discrimination. “ ‘Men are always
surprised to see a Balkan woman so well acquainted with
’their world’. They do their best to help. The most important thing for clients is when you appreciate their time
and understand their requirements,” Svetlana points out.
The interiors of Boeing 787 VIP
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