Ercegovac – Hats and Accessories

Ercegovac hats is a designer’s brand that boasts a whole line of fashion items: both women’s and men’s hats, berets pillbox hats, caps, fascinantes, scarfs, bijouterie and a wide array of wearing headwear including all hair decorations which are made for modern-day dynamic personalities. Our refined and must-have fashion items are designed to be worn on a daily basis but also in a special occasion, thus coloring every individual’s appearance.

Discover Ercegovac hats collections and become a part of our 90 year long tradition.

The Ercegovac hats fashion store is situated in the center of Belgrade, just across the Palace on Terazije. It was founded by Vojislav Ercegovac who, after the war, moved to Belgrade and started working as travelling salesman at the shop of Milivoj Popov. Mr. Popov had already been in the hat manufacturing and sales business, working out of a shop in no. 5 Kolarceva street. Milena Ercegovac, Vojislav’s sister, who was married to Milivoj Popov was working at that same store as well.

On August 1st 1927, Vojislav opened his own women’s hats store in Kneza Milosa street. The store was named Women’s Hats Main Warehouse and Store Ercegovac. One of the store’s employees was Jelena Trbojevic, the then soon to be wife of Vojislav.

Jelena had graduated from high school in Osjek, where she later studied fashion design and crafts at the esteemed store Klingen. She arrived in Belgrade in 1927 and immediately started designing fashion items for the Ercegovac fashion store. A year later, due to an increase in demand and consequently production of Jelena’s and Vojislav’s hats, they opened another store in no. 4 Sremska street, which was working over the course of the following two years. During those years, they even opened another store in Kralja Milana street, in which only children’s hats could be bought.

During the awful crisis in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the Ercegovacstore, under Jelena’s supervision, continued to produce high-quality women’s hats made from high-grade materials. One of the biggest exporting business deals at the time was completed with « Goma », a company that ordered a hindered hats for the Russian women’s Olympic team that was participating in the 1994 Olympic games in Lillehammer. Besides this, in those rather dark times (specifically1993 and 1994), Jelena presented her products at fashion week events in the Zepter Gallery and the Bit Club in Belgrade’s Hyatt Hotel as well as at a number of different fashion shows in SKC and Bitef Theatre.

Today Vojislav and Jelena’s great-granddaughter, and Jelena’s daughter, Isidora Todorovic, studies architecture as well and in the myriad of commercial production fashion lines, maintains the family tradition and keeps the family’s unique style alive in the same store at Terazije 40. She claims that her vision is to help create a new generation of young adults that will regard hats as standard fashion items and to expand her client list to new young women and girls that will wear uniquely designed hats, hand-made from the best materials available.

As architects, grandmother Jelisaveta, daughter Jelena and grandaughter Isidora recognized and appreciated the quality of the store’s original interior and exterior design from 1932 as well as the beauty and authenticity of the art deco typography of the writings on the store. The three of them managed to maintain the store’s original look, implementing only minor changes along the way. Therefore, from a visual perspective, as well as a historical one, the store is a true Belgrade rarity and gem.