The Legacy of Čedo Komljenović

Written by: Mladen Pleše
Photos: Boris Štajduhar & personal archive

Among the countless projects realised by Čedo Komljenović, aka Monty Shadow, the one that stands out the most is the Symbol magazine, his pride and glory. This deluxe broadsheet periodical, printed on the finest paper, kept up with the latest trends in the world of fashion, luxury cars, watches, jewellery, design, sports, art… It featured the world’s most successful businessmen, top athletes, the most prominent pop stars and world-class artists.

In order to have their ad published in this prestigious magazine, companies were willing to pay an exorbitant amount of money. Regular advertisers were Ferrari, Mercedes, BMW, Armani, Richemont, Valentino… Symbol turned into a communication platform for luxury brands such as Rolls-Royce, IWC, Cartier, Pirelli, Lamborghini, Mont Blanc, Montegrappa… Čedo Komljenović (1939-2021) was also the owner of the luxury magazine called Sun International, as well as several other magazines.

Silvije Hraste, a lawyer who was a close friend of Čedo Komljenović and to whom Čedo left the rights to all future issues of the Symbol magazine, has made it his mission not to let his belated friend down. Together with his associates, he decided to bring Symbol back to life and here you have it – the first copy of the latest edition lies before your very eyes.  

And it was namely Symbol that was the springboard for two of the many ingenious ideas of Čedo Komljenović. Johann Rupert, the owner of Richemont, the world’s third-leading manufacturer of luxury apparel, jewellery, diamonds, watches and leather products, pointed out the importance of one of these two ideas… It is worth noting that Richemont is behind IWC Schaffhausen, Vacheron Constantin and Officine Panerai watches, as well as iconic jewellery manufacturers such as Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels…. Rupert’s fortune is estimated at several billion dollars, and he had appointed Čedo as his watch industry advisor.  

At a grand reception in Geneva, Rupert revealed that it was none other than Čedo who deserved the most credit for establishing The Laureus World Sports Awards, an annual award ceremony honouring the best athletes in the world. “One day at lunch, Monty told me that the world of sports is severely lacking in ceremonies such as The Academy Awards or Nobel Prize, and that it would be a good idea to set up a foundation for awarding prizes to sportsmen. Together with Mercedes and Deutsche Bank, we founded a company that started awarding prizes to the best athletes in the world,” Rupert said at the time. Čedo Komljenović thus became a 25 % shareholder of this highly esteemed and extremely profitable organisation.

Komljenović’s second million dollar idea, which occurred to him thanks to his involvement in Symbol, was the establishment of St. Moritz Art Masters, a unique expo of fine and musical arts. Over the years, the expo has featured more than 400 artists from around the world, including our sculptor Dušan Džamonja. Every year St. Moritz welcomed numerous jetsetters from all over the world – it became a matter of prestige to appear at such a famed art festival. The main sponsors were Cartier, Mercedes Benz, Julius Baer bank, Maybach, Lufthansa, tableware manufacturer called Meissen, aircraft manufacturing company Bombardier and the city of St. Moritz itself.  

It is hard to keep count of the many similar business ventures by Monty Shadow that followed. Although he started out as a photographer, Čedo Komljenović organised various entertainment events early on in his career: among other things, he set up a fashion show for the Belgian-British textile company Scabal in Croatia at the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, much to the dismay of many people. He was a representative of the Italian textile group Cerruti, and within the scope of his endeavours at the Svijet magazine he staged the first fashion shows under the name of Eurofashion. It was the golden age of show business in our country, filled with fashion shows and music and film festivals…

One of his greatest achievements was bringing Bob Guccione, the owner and publisher of the Penthouse magazine – a proper publishing sensation at the time – to Haludovo on the island of Krk. Guccione opened a casino at the namesake hotel, and the grand opening was, of course, attended by many dignitaries. The special treat were the legendary Penthouse Ladies who worked as waitresses…

Journalist Pero Zlatar wrote the bestselling book Šarmeri bez pokrića, in which one can find many details about Komljenović’s rollercoaster of a life. Among other things, Komljenović supplied the then-Yugoslavian ski team with equipment and clothing from the world’s most famous companies (Fila, Ellese, Sergio Tacchini…), which he duly promoted. He was also tight with the key players in the world of sports, especially those in Formula 1. There he made friends with Bernie Ecclestone, Flavio Briatore, and drivers like Nelson Pique and Michael Schumacher…. His close bond to Formula 1 lasted for a long time, just as he was friends with the top manager of Milan – Ariedo Braida – for many years.

While trying to explain the phenomenon called Čedo Komljenović, the publisher Nino Pavić kept pointing out that Monty Shadow did what no other man from these parts had done before. “Čedo met, befriended, hung out and did business with some of the biggest names from the world of business, film, sport, entertainment, and fashion. It’s kind of pointless to talk about it here because everyone is convinced that Čedo was making it up, deeming it impossible for a kid from Karlovac to work his way to the top of the business and fashion worlds…”

Truth be told, it really is incredible that Čedo, who came from a modest, working-class family, managed to rise to the top of the corporate and fashion ladders. Encouraged by Pero Zlatar, he started working as a photojournalist for the Karlovac weekly. Soon enough, he set up an exhibition of his photos. As early as that, he demonstrated exceptional dexterity, even impudence. When Kwame Nkrumah, the president of Ghana, was already getting into the limousine to drive away, Čedo walked past the bodyguard, tapped on the window and urged him out of the car to take his picture. Everyone was taken aback, but the president actually came out of the car and Čedo photographed him. That was when he realised, as he would go on to say, that he could basically get to whomever he wanted with the help of a camera. On top of that, when he started working at Vjesnik, he photographed Josip Broz Tito on the Brijuni Islands.

The late journalist Vlado Bojkić said that, for a time, Monty worked in England and Sweden picking strawberries, and then he got engaged to a Swedish woman. Ratomir Petković, a journalist from Karlovac, shared an anecdote about Čedo: in order to sweep a girl off her feet, Čedo borrowed a record player from the store owner. He then gave it to the girl, but the following day he went back to her house and told her mother that he had to take the record player in for repair. Then he returned it to the store. That’s how the rumours about Čedo started spreading…

The people of Karlovac remembered this version of Čedo, so it does not come as a surprise that they had a hard time believing how far their fellow citizen had come. However, after twenty years of experience in photography, Komljenović realised that he could try his hand at other jobs as well.

Selimir Ognjenović, one of the bigshots of Croatian tourism and the owner of the tour operator Riva Tours, was more than surprised when Čedo Komljenović called him one evening and said, “I’m in Munich and I’m taking the president of the Daimler-Benz corporation, Jürgen Schrempp, to dinner. I want to treat him to some our wine and prosciutto, so please be a darling and bring some to the restaurant of chef Joseph Sepp Kratz. We’re waiting for you.”

 Ognjenović picked out several bottles of Istrian wines and some Dalmatian prosciutto. When he arrived at the spot and said who he was meeting, he was led to a VIP room where Schrempp and Čedo were waiting for him. Schrempp immediately tore into the prosciutto and wine, and the deal was sealed within a few hours: Schrempp rented Riva’s boat, which he used to cruise the Adriatic with his family that summer, away from prying eyes…

“I can’t tell a single German person about it because they would think I’m lying or that I’ve gone nuts saying I had dinner with Schrempp, one of the most important people in the German business world ”, Ognjenović lamented the next morning.

The outstanding late journalist and editor Sead Saračević reasoned in a similar vein. He was at St. Moritz, where Čedo organized the presentation of new Rolls-Royce models. Three Rolls-Royces were landed on the frozen lake by helicopters, and Čedo then threw a gala event in the theatre with the then-super popular Hot Gospel group. At the end of the show, the entire audience gave a standing ovation and started chanting “Monty, Monty!” “It’s such a shame,” Saračević said, “that I can’t tell anyone about it – because no one would believe me.”   

Since the mid-seventies, Čedo lived in Biandrate, 45 kilometres from Milan. He purchased a part of the abbey dating back to 1040 and turned it into an actual castle. The 300-square-meter living room was filled with stylish furniture, the ceiling and walls were decorated with magnificent old beams, there were countless souvenirs there, small works of art, huge old paintings, precious figurines, candelabras, books, magazines, computers, TVs… Čedo also had Ayrton Senna’s helmet, Boris Becker’s tennis racket and the ball Maradona played with.

Čedo had a thing for luxury items – from watches to cars, designer suits, shoes, and furniture –  basically anything superbly crafted, with a good backstory and a long tradition, so no wonder he was hailed as “the guru of luxury”.

Čedo was at full throttle twenty hours a day. The phones were ringing non-stop, and businessmen, bankers, investors, managers, and pretty ladies lined up at his door. Čedo would always agree to see them all and lend them an ear amidst the chaos. He welcomed thousands of people into his home, including model and actress Kelly LeBrock, actor Clint Eastwood, Formula 1 drivers Nelson Piquet, Rene Arnoux, Riccardo Patrese, as well as Princesses of Monaco, Caroline and Stephanie, and tennis players Boris Becker, Bjorn Borg and the like.

While acting as an advisor to the President of the Schrempp Management Board, Komljenović formed a partnership between Mercedes and the Richemont group, so from that moment on most cars were equipped with IWC watches. He built a special collaboration and friendship with Benedikt Taschen, the major publisher of prestigious books and monographs, and Taschen sailed the Adriatic with his family as his guest for two years in a row. Čedo’s frequent companions were the legendary Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, the Italian football coach Fabio Capello, the businessman Filip Zepter, Bernie Ecclestone, and golfer Tom Watson…    

He made calendars for the ministries of tourism of Seychelles and Mauritius for years on end. He also spent some time devising advertising materials for the promotion of tourism in South Africa, during which time he became great friends with Sol Kerzner, the founder of Sun City and the owner of the company Atlantis and some three hundred hotels.

When it comes to bizarre stories surrounding his persona, one is tough to gloss over. The famous owner of Formula 1, Bernie Ecclestone, invited Čedo, yours truly and several millionaires and billionaires to join him for dinner at the famous La Briciola Mare restaurant in Milan. At the end of the evening, Čedo covered a whopper bill. When we were leaving the restaurant, Bernie grabbed my arm and said, without the slightest remorse, “Look at that Čedo fella. He’s spending money like a drunken sailor. I would never have anything if I ever spent that much money in my life.”

Perhaps this very anecdote best depicts the lifestyle and character of Čedo Komljenović. He never ate lunch or dinner alone; he was always in company, often a larger one. And he was virtually always the one to pay for the meals! All the parking lot attendants in Milan knew him, and they would always get him a spot because he was more than generous to all of them.

The Croatian public perceived Komljenović primarily as a photographer of naked women. He launched the careers of dozens of girls who had posed for the magazine Start at the time. They all made a name of themselves in the fashion industry, but Bernarda Marovt achieved the greatest success, all thanks to Čedo. She went on to became one of the highest-paid models in Europe. He also introduced Slavica Radić to Bernie Ecclestone, and the rest is history…

Hundreds of beauties from all over the world passed through his studio, but they never had a single bad thing to say about him. We all know how uncommon that is in the world of fashion and movies.

He worked with the greatest faces of fashion, such as Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Christie Brinkley, Christy Turlington, Stephanie Seymour and Linda Evangelista. That was back in the supermodel era, the time when Komljenović made his biggest photographic and editorial breakthrough. He brought the famous South African actress Charlize Theron to Milan, along with another South African woman, Tanja Purrie. They both became huge stars.

He made calendars for the Magnetti company, as well as Tullio Abatte’s Riva Boats, Ducati, Stefano Ricci, Contax, Hasselblad and Leica. One year he received the Golden Contax award for the best photo taken with their camera.

Photografica weekly proclaimed Monty a symbol of lifestyle, design, charm, motoring, and adventure, while others declared him the best PR manager ever. He had several companies and offices in Milan.

On one occasion, people were talking and urging Čedo to write a book, considering all his interesting acquaintances. When Bernie Ecclestone heard this, he got up from the table, turned to Čedo and said, “I have a better idea. You don’t need to write a book; just announce that you intend to publish one, and hundreds of people will send huge checks your way just to stop you from ever doing it.”