Jakarta Fashion Week Kicks Off With Tropical Bang
Note from Editor: As more images from the show are released to the press, they will be added into the gallery below.
In the pantheon of fashion week coverage, New York, London, Milan and Paris may get the majority of the headlines, but those cities sometimes feel tired after a certain point. Part of the soul of fashion is adventure and excitement, and there comes a point when — no matter how spectacular the designs gliding down the runway may be — it all seems too tired. Even the salon shows can get stale.
Not so in Jakarta. The Indonesian capital is alive with possibility, and as the nation comes of age in the exploding economy of Southeast Asia, it serves as an appropriate tastemaker for the region’s trends. Indonesia may also be the most populous Islamic country on Earth, but Jakarta’s fashion week — an annual event since 2008 — shows that even in a nation governed to a degree by Sharia, style can straddle the line between unquestionable sex appeal and traditional mores.
Jakarta Fashion Week 2013 (JFW) is unconventional in many ways. With womenswear and menswear being shown at the same time (!), a hodgepodge of designers and themes — from wildly flirtatious eveningwear to conservative Islamic attire appropriate for any Mosque — permeates the tropical paradise with a dramatic landscape that has served as an inspiration for collections the world over.
A bevvy of national and international sponsors has percolated into JFW of late (Outback Steakhouse? Strange but true), bringing with the financial resources some much-needed clout for a region often pigeonholed as either a Developing World afterthought or major week wannabe. What’s still missing is some of the star power of other fashion weeks. Diane von Furstenburg, courtside at the Lakers-Clippers NBA game in Los Angeles, missed out on the week’s debut. So did the likes of Anna Wintour, Georgina Chapman, and André Leon Talley. The benefit, though, of such lack of celebrity is more of a focus on the designers and their clothes — exactly what a fashion week is supposed to be about.
Day one of the week-long event, which this year has featured a heavy emphasis on wooing international buyers, kicked off with the kind of bang on November 3 that only the tropics can bring. It was just an hour-long show, but what a show it was: titled “Indonesia Today, the World Tomorrow,” the runway show featuring Korean designer Lie Sang Bong and Sebastian Gunawan was a celebration of all things Indonesian, with a bit of English prep thrown in for good measure.
In the first section Bong, based in Paris, let the imagination run wild — literally. His couture designs were presented in a rich palette of blue, red, orange, and green. The silhouettes cut by his designs were diversified in peplums, whether they were structured, loose, or seamed together as if they were supposed to be origami rather than attire. A blue ruffled number practically brought the house down, conjuring images of a chic Ursula from Disney’s The Little Mermaid; garish, yes, but absolutely ravishing. The 24 looks Bong featured — including disparate styles beginning with pencil skirts and shifting to dresses, long coats and long dresses, and a plethora of houndstooth patterns — served to solidify his standing as one of Lady Gaga and Rihanna’s favorite designers. The collection ultimately ended with an uber-stylish raincoat in butterfly patterns and contrasting colors that suggested a new slogan for JFW: “Anything is possible.”
While this precocious debut set the bar high, Gunawan was more than up to the task of equaling the lofty expectations set by Bong. The monochromatic nuance of nude, white, and black in 1950s silhouettes dominated the collection, which was inspired by the patterns seen in marble. Unabashed lace and crochet displayed an unvarnished quality in a series of leggings, capes, cropped tops and pencil skirts, which juxtaposed with the marble theme. The playful yet sophisticated femininity Gunawan showcased ultimately garnered the greatest applause for his peplum and solid shoulder pads as well as his one shoulder, off shoulder, full skirts, and mullet dresses. Sleek, yet not overly obnoxious, hairstyles complimented the designs perfectly; espousing a need for modernity with the dreaminess fashion aspires to.
The audience appropriately titillated by the possibilities offered by a land of at least 17,508 islands (to say nothing of the buyers, who included representatives from Lambert & Associates, a buying house representing Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Lane Crawford, Joyce Ma and Fenwick, among others), a provocative opening statement was made as the latest edition of one of the “hidden treasures” of the world’s fashion weeks began its extravaganza: fashion can, unquestionably, take you anywhere — airfare and time machines not required.
Jakarta Fashion Week 2013: November 3-4
Jakarta Fashion Week 2013: November 5-6
