
Gordana Rasic/Photo: Gino Baileau
By Sarah Alo
Gordana Rasic is a woman of contrast. She is a premed student with a double major in molecular & cellular biology and anthropology, and minors in chemistry and LGBT queer studies. She holds staff positions in cultural and fashion clubs and works a job shadowing medical students. And in her spare time, she designs her autumn/winter collection of women’s clothing and promotes her spring/summer line in Chicago. She is the head designer of Goca Designs, the fashion line she founded in November 2010 at the age of 20.
Rasic says she enjoys medicine and fashion for a common reason: She likes solving puzzles. When using critical analysis for diagnosis in the medical field or for any area of science, there is a puzzle present. “When I’m sewing, I refuse to use patterns,” Rasic says. To her, the material is one big puzzle.
Rasic is self-taught, but has always been involved in a wide range of the arts, from painting to acting, from singing to dancing. “The whole realm of the art world is a passion of mine,” Rasic says. It was not until her sophomore year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she will be a senior this fall, that she decided she wanted to make things that were both in fashion and affordable.
More importantly, however, Rasic’s clothing has meaning. She says many designers these days design for aesthetics, while she and a few others design for artistic integrity and unveil a message.
Her spring/summer collection features bright colors and inspirations from Nabokov’s “Lolita”—the cuts originate from children’s clothing but are adapted for a woman’s style. “My key message was that as we all entered adulthood, we had to put our imaginations on the backburner,” she says. “The collection overall shows the progression from day to night looks, but conveys the message that despite the location, time or personality, we are all capable of preserving our imagination, and finally, embodying it. Read the rest of this entry »