Ebook: Contemporary Indonesian Fashion: Through the Looking Glass

Indonesian fashion has undergone a period of rapid growth over the last three decades. This book explores how through years of social, political, and cultural upheaval, the country’s fashion has moved away from “colonial fashion” and “national dress” to claim its own distinct identity as contemporary fashion in a global world.
With specific reference to women’s wear, Contemporary Indonesian Fashion explores the diversity and complexity of the country’s sartorial offerings, which weave together local textile traditions like batik and ikat-making with contemporary narratives. The book questions concepts of “tradition” and “modernity” in the developing world, taking stock of the elite consumption of luxury brands and the large-scale manufacturing of fast fashion, and introduces us to the rise of new trends such as busana muslim (or “modest wear”), creating a portrait of a vibrant and growing national and, increasingly, international, industry.
Exploring clothing in shopping malls, on the catwalk, in magazines, and online, the book examines how Indonesian fashion is made, presented, and consumed, combining research in Indonesia with analysis and personal reflection. Contemporary Indonesian Fashion ultimately questions the deeply entrenched eurocentrism of “global fashion”, simultaneously interrogating current homogenizing beauty and body image discourses posited as universal, by pointing to absences, silences, and erasures as reflected by contemporary Indonesian fashion— hence the “looking glass” of the title. Aptly illustrated, the book offers a new perspective on a rapidly developing new fashion capital, Jakarta.
Contemporary Indonesian fashion has grown, through socio-political and cultural upheavals, in the post- reformasi period, from varied earlier incarnations as ‘colonial fashion’ ‘national dress’ and ‘fashion trends in Indonesia’. Its existence bears out the commitment of the designers, many of whom are themselves women, to dressing urban women, envisioned as sleek, chic and sassy, with a global outlook, and offering a mix of ready-to-wear and bespoke fittings.
Contemporary Indonesian fashion reveals a high degree of complexity and multi-layering, with a unique and rather distinctive aesthetics, whilst on the surface perfectly comfortable with adopting a European fashion system and terminology. Rich textile traditions of batik making and ikat weaving, rooted in the history of local communities, underpin the personal trajectories of today’s designers and their attempts to create ‘clothes that tell a story’. Niche manufacturing of eco-design markedly contrasts with an avid elite consumption of international high end, status enhancing, luxury brands, and with low end, large scale clothing manufacturing and consumption of fast fashion. In the background, there is the trend of ‘modest wear’, perceived as a globally profitable opportunity and enthusiastically received by the Western fashion capitals although its adoption within Indonesia, and its perception as signifier of Indonesian fashion, remains contentious.
The aesthetic discourse of Indonesian fashion is entwined with the ‘international’ beauty standards touted by the beauty industry and relayed and amplified by media intervention, through the glamorizing narratives of fashion photography, though not without resistance. Additionally, the endorsement of ‘stylish individualism’ by the high end shopping malls and the fashion magazines sustains the performance of a ‘stylish femininity’ variously defined.
Combining research in Indonesia with analysis and personal reflection, this book ultimately questions the deeply entrenched eurocentrism of ‘global fashion’, simultaneously interrogating current homogenising beauty and body image discourses posited as universal, by pointing to absences, silences and erasures as reflected back by contemporary Indonesian fashion – hence the ‘looking glass’ of the title.