Coco Chanel was quoted as saying, “Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions.” Sarajevo design student Tea Petrovic seems to have taken Coco’s statement to heart; for her graduating project, Petrovic designed a startlingly original collection of shoes based on the designs of the greatly influential Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava and the works of the late Russian Constructivist sculptor Naum Gabo. But Petrovic quotes another fashion designer in her statement, writing, “Bernard Figueroa once said: ‘There is so much space between a woman’s heel and the floor that one can use, and that is exactly what I tried to accomplish … using this space as much as possible.”
     Discarding the fashion designer’s usual considerations of function and comfort, Petrovic focuses instead on the shoe as a pure geometric form, “rich in freedom and artistic expression”. She chose Gabo and Calatrava for their focus on figures “inspired mostly by nature, space, geometric shapes, and mathematical principles”.
     The heel, specifically, is Petrovic’s focal point. To her, heels “are like supporting poles, constructive elements which carry the whole creative process”. Petrovic created the 3D heel shapes by multiplying, overlapping, and rotating 2D surfaces. The result is a series of exquisitely constructed sculptural works.