The New Trend Is From The Old Heritage

When Indonesian decide their own fashion taste

Like most of other women, my two sisters are typical of women who always care about their look especially what they wear, but I found something unusual with them as suddenly they talk about Batik as Fashion. I thought the word “Batik” and “Fashion” are contradiction, the first one is identical with formal & old fashion style and the other one is more identical to something up to date or new style, but now those two word could be united.

Because I always curious about the roots & the past than I make a little investigation about fashion & batik. The local fashionista usually love to follow western fashion trend, they wear dresses that also worn by celebrities from the west. Surprisingly now they wear dresses with batik motifs that actually already exist especially in Java Island more than centuries.

Before the batik motifs become fashion trend, Indonesian only wear it in formal places & certain situation. Usually batik used as uniform in schools or governmental offices and also as formal dress when we went to wedding ceremony. In contrary most of us don’t wear batik when we go to the mall, café, cinema or other places for hang out. But now (2008) suddenly malls & other hang out places are “attack” by the new trend. Some boutique who usually sale western style dresses suddenly also sale dresses with batik motifs.

What is Batik?
Batik is a method of printing colored designs on cloth by waxing the part that is not to be dyed. Batik exists in the island of Java; cities that famous for its production are Solo, Yogyakarta, Pekalongan, Lasem, Cirebon etc. Each of those cities has their own batik style, if you’re an expert you could know where the batik is come from by recognizing the motifs. Actually each motif has its own meaning, philosophy & story, but most of people prefer to admire only the physical design.

From old photos we could see the batik worn only as under dress and used not just by the royal family or dancers but also by common people. It was the part of the Javanese culture until the western spread their dress style to the world including Indonesia, and the consequences is the traditional dresses replace by shirt, pants & skirt. The new modern style is accepted by the native probably because it’s simpler than the traditional one & also looks more civilized. Traditional dresses left by its own user & the batik motif became more forgetting by its people. But designers who love batik are clever, if the people didn’t wear traditional dresses as their daily dress anymore it doesn’t mean they also should forget batik. Then designers start to made modern dresses from batik & fortunately the governments choose it as the national dress.

Soekarno (The first Indonesian president 1945-1966) ask designers to use batik as national dress for women & Ali Sadikin (Jakarta’s governor in 1970’s) popularized batik as modern shirt. He uses it as uniform in the governmental institutions & schools. Now it’s more common to wear modern dress with batik motifs even though only in special occasion.

Indonesia is so lucky because some idealist designer still preserve this heritage until now. One of them is the batik maestro Iwan Tirta which is his design often use by the government to introduce the batik dress to politician or famous people who meet the President, but as fashion batik is not the favorite choose until 2008.

Other designer who cares about batik is Edward Hutabarat, two years a go (2006) he introduce his new collection with batik motifs, but many people said that it’s like a suicide if he use batik as his new collection. Now he proves that everybody was wrong because now almost every woman in big city looking for batik and other designers & boutiques follow his step.

Thanks to designers who keep their own principle to preserve batik pattern & modified it with modern style now Indonesian Fashionista has their own character, they do not always follow the western style. But the next question is: Is this pro local fashion styles will be everlasting or just a temporary trend? You never know what will happen in the future, but at least now I am one of the people who celebrate this phenomenon

Ramdan Panigoro
Mei 18th 2008