The art of reinvention: Ivona Brnelić for Večernji List

There are careers that follow a plan, and then there are lives that simply follow an inner compass. Ivona Brnelić belongs firmly to the second category. Co-founder of Remington Real Estate, the exclusive Christie's International Real Estate affiliate in Croatia, she brings to that role a biography that few in the industry can match: the last Miss Yugoslavia, a performer who shared stages with Tina Turner, Cher, Beyoncé, and the Spice Girls, and a woman who has reinvented herself not once but several times, always on her own terms.

The extensive interview she gave to Večernji List offers the most personal account yet of the journey that led her here, and of the values that have remained constant throughout every chapter of it.

She describes growing up with dreams that puzzled those around her. At a time when commercial dance barely existed as a profession in Croatia, she was already telling people that was exactly where she intended to go. At 16, she watched Tina Turner perform in Zagreb and felt something shift inside her. That moment, she says, planted the seed for everything that followed.

The Miss Yugoslavia title in 1989 opened doors, but Brnelić is candid about what came with them. The glamour had a darker side. There were situations where everything was reduced to appearance, where she felt defined solely by how she looked. That, she says, never fulfilled her. What she wanted was something deeper, a different world and different values. London gave her that. Moving there alone, without certainty, at a time when the country she had just represented was beginning to fall apart, was an enormous step. She did not overanalyze it. She simply knew she had to go.

What followed was years of building an identity that had nothing to do with titles or looks. The discipline of professional dance at the highest level, the constant pressure to exceed her own limits, the experience of working alongside artists of extraordinary stature: all of it shaped her in ways she says she only fully understood much later. She describes the moment she first met Tina Turner, trying on costumes before a television performance, and the way the room changed when Turner walked in. Warmth, presence, and an absolute naturalness that surprised her. And she describes standing backstage before their first appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show, hearing Oprah announce them, and thinking: “Is it really possible that this is my life?”

Turner, she says, was the most demanding collaboration of her career. The level of professionalism and intensity required rapid adaptation. Being on stage with her was not simply a matter of executing steps correctly. You had to match her as a performer, reflect her energy and emotion. That demanded enormous personal and professional growth. The moment she felt it click, opening a choreography and sensing something had shifted in her, remains one she has never forgotten. Their eyes met, and she felt for the first time that Turner had truly seen her.

Off stage, once accepted into Turner's inner circle, she encountered a completely different person: warm, emotional, and deep. She recalls a concert in Poland where heavy rain made the situation genuinely dangerous. The audience refused to leave, sheltering under plastic sheets. Turner did not hesitate for a second. She walked out onto that stage as if the rain did not exist. That moment, Brnelić says, was when she best understood why Turner was who she was. The audience did not only feel her talent. They felt that she gave them everything she had.

The transition into luxury real estate came not as a rupture but as a natural convergence. Brnelić had long been drawn to interior design, exploring it through her own properties in London and Rijeka, but the performing career left no room for it to develop seriously. The pandemic changed that. When everything stopped, she used the time to deepen her design education and give that side of herself the space it had been waiting for.

The opportunity to co-found Remington Real Estate and take on the Christie's International Real Estate representation for Croatia emerged from that period, and it made complete sense. Christie's, she explains, was not simply a powerful global brand. It represented a philosophy, a level of quality, aesthetics, and international standing that aligned with what she and her partner Ivan Kovačić wanted to build. Crucially, it offered a platform to present Croatia and its coastline at the level they deserve, as a destination that can stand alongside the most beautiful markets in the world.

The partnership with Kovačić, both personal and professional, works because they are genuinely complementary. He comes from the business world; she comes from the creative. They are similar enough in values to share a direction, and different enough in perspective to push each other. She speaks of him with clear respect, describing the mutual trust that makes the collaboration function. They have also learned, she says, the discipline of leaving work at the door when they come home, not always easily, but consistently enough to protect what matters.

Asked what she would say to the young Ivona at the start of it all, her answer is characteristic in its directness. She would tell her: well done. Not for the success or the great moments, but for the courage to step into the unknown, for the persistence when things were hardest, and above all, for remaining herself throughout. That, in the end, is the thread that runs through every chapter of this story and the same quality that defines the approach she and Kovačić bring to Remington Real Estate today.

If you would like to read the full interview, click the following link: Večernji List.

May 17, 2026