Milica Babić-Jovanović

alt=The Serbian costume designer Milica Babić-Jovanović in 1961. Milica Babić-Jovanović (September 2, 1909 – March 24, 1968) was a Serbian costume designer, known for her work with the Serbian National Theatre. She designed costumes for over 300 performances over the course of her career.

Early life and education Milica Babić was born in 1909 in Šamac, Austria-Hungary, in what is now the Republika Srpska, an entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Her parents were Stevan, a wealthy merchant, and Zora. She displayed a talent for visual art, and after she graduated high school her father sent her to study in Vienna. There, she spent five years as a student at the School of Applied Arts of the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry, now the Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna. In her role at the theater, she collaborated with such artists as Jovan Bijelić and . Babić-Jovanović also worked as a professor, becoming the first lecturer on the history of costumes and wigs at the National Theatre's acting school. Though she was based in Belgrade, throughout her career she traveled to work on productions across the region, including in Zagreb, Sarajevo, Skopje, Ljubljana, and Dubrovnik.

Personal life Her first husband was the journalist and diplomat Nenad Jovanović. After the war, she returned to working in the theater in Belgrade, making costumes out of sacks and parachute silk due to the postwar economic situation.

After Nenad died in 1957, she married the Nobel Prize-winning writer Ivo Andrić, with whom she had been close long before her first husband's death. The two met through Nenad and had become close friends in Berlin, where Andrić had also been stationed nearly two decades earlier. Her second marriage lasted from 1958 until her death.

Babić-Jovanović died of a heart attack in 1968, in Herceg Novi. She is buried in Belgrade New Cemetery's Alley of Distinguished Citizens.