Izabel: Striding Forward

Bruce Emond ,  WEEKENDER   |  Fri, 06/26/2009 5:56 PM  |  Profile

As one of the country’s top models, Izabel Jahja is used to being center stage. Not content to remain the mannequin or the muse, she has gone on to a successful career in journalism. All it took was a willingness to learn from others, to explore her talents and to be herself. Bruce Emond meets her.

Photo by Adi Wahono

Izabel Jahja is taking a quick time-out for lunch, amid the usual round of Monday meetings and decisions for the next issue of the monthly magazine A+. At 33 and newly married, she looks – in a perfectly matched red gingham shirt, skinny white pants and heels – fresh-faced and youthful as she strides into a South Jakarta cafe.

She orders a beef bacon burrito with asparagus – as a matter of record, for those interested in the eating habits of the thin and beautiful, she eats it all, including the accompanying fries and salad, enjoying it with generous scoops of mustard (a nod to her French heritage from her mother).

She talks about her career, her interests, popular culture, but she also knows the art of being a good conversationalist, because she listens and asks questions and is attentive as the discussion winds on for two hours. She does not make it all about la belle Izabel, as she has been called, one of the last remaining models to stand out from the now-so-crowded catwalk crowd – a blur of pretty but mostly unmemorable faces – and the editor in chief of a leading fashion and lifestyle magazine.

Of course, for all its informality, it’s still an interview, and Izabel is known for her professional attitude, someone who is unlikely to gush or grandstand. She is guarded but lives up to the advance billing of friends and acquaintances as intelligent, unpretentious and realistic about life, people and herself. A regular on the social circuit, she has a vast network, because knowing the right people is essential to making headway in the fashion world.

When Izabel says she is wont to forget how old she is, it elicits the inevitable you-don’t-look-your-age compliment, but she also explains it was why she decided to give up the catwalk last year.

“I thought now I would just love to come to the show and watch, because all this time I was the one on stage. Now I want to be the editor. I cannot be a model forever, it’s impossible. I’m 33; it’s time for other models to come along.”

She went on comedian Tukul Arwana’s talk show in May to discuss the modeling industry. Although she says she had been sick, she went on with the show, appearing radiant in white shorts that displayed her famously long legs and she was easily the most comfortable of the guests. She was able to parry Tukul’s corny needling with her own repartee, including a smattering of French to disarm her host.

With the TV appearances, her modeling background, occasional gossip-mag mentions (her marriage in March garnered a comment in at least one of them) and the fallout from a photo scandal five years ago, she is an almost household name, but she states coyly but firmly that “I’m not a celebrity”.

Today it seems everybody else wants to be. A+, now in its ninth year, is gradually switching into a fashion-and-celebrity publication. The day of the supermodel being able to carry a magazine cover is long gone, with celebrities the faces that sell. The May cover was actress Sandra Dewi; previously, entertainer Bunga Citra Lestari was out front, ironically in an issue about models from different generations.

It’s a necessary compromise for Izabel, who says she enjoys the occasional piece of juicy gossip – “it makes me laugh” – but avoids watching the wasteland of local TV or reading trashy tabloids. For that is what the market wants.

“It’ll be a very gossipy market magazine,” she concedes. “It’s still a fashion magazine, but based on international and local celebrities. Mostly what we’re going to gossip about is not their issues, but if we do, it’s like how to handle it in your life, how one can learn from it … so it’s teaching more of the humanism and the relationship to the people.”

***

Photo by Oetomo (Courtesy of Izabel Jahja)

Raised in Jakarta, Izabel started her modeling career at age 12 in teen magazines; her West Sumatran father had reservations about her modeling, but her mother (her parents met when they both studied in Sweden) urged her to give it a try and chaperoned her to shoots and, later, catwalk shows.

“I was already almost as tall as I am now at 12, and people were always coming up to me to ask me to model, especially catwalk … My mother kind of pushed me to give it a try, first with magazines, later catwalk, and she put me in a modeling school to learn the basics …”

She is, she believes, and friends also attest, very Indonesian in her outlook, from growing up here. But when she was a teenager, her mother, who Izabel says has become more Indonesian than most Indonesians in her love of the country and its culture, sent her and her brother to the French international school, even though they wanted to go to regular state schools with their friends.

“She said, ‘You’ll never forget your French roots’,” she says, in her fluent, slightly clipped English. “We didn’t like it at the time, but now we know that we wouldn’t have learned so many languages or met so many different types of people … I’m grateful to have both ways.”

She was a popular teen model, and she says that models today have a much more comfortable experience.

“Now you just arrive and don’t have to bring anything, everything is ready for you. I had to carry a bag with shoes, stockings, makeup, hair rollers, everything. It was really heavy. Before I had my own car, I’d have to go by bus or cab carrying that … They were hard times but not in a bad way.”

When the region-wide economic crisis hit in 1997, modeling jobs dried up and Izabel went to Singapore the following year. It was a difficult and more competitive scene, but she says it gave her the grounding she needed to truly understand what it takes to be a professional model.

“It was the first time I stretched myself. Here it was just standard for me being one of the top models, the leader in my own backyard, but I went there and found out I was no one, there were so many things I needed to explore … Getting jobs made me a smarter person. I realized I needed to see the world.”

It was exasperating at times; she remembers being in New York City, wondering what she was doing with her career, tired after being told once more she was not quite the girl they were looking for and bursting into tears. She learned the importance of showing character and having a professional attitude, whether it was on a go-see or a cattle call with hundreds of other girls, all pretty, all seeking the job.

Modeling can be a distracting world, and people often lose their way amid the temptations and competitiveness. Either way, it didn’t go to Izabel’s head, friend Caroline Zachrie says.

“There is one word I think best describes Izabel, and that is focused,” says the model and TV presenter, who was a bridesmaid at Izabel’s wedding in Bali. “She gets on with things and has a mature attitude. She’s also very grounded about life and what she needs to do.”

She came back to Indonesia in 2002 and used her English proficiency to do some radio, before going into print media as a freelance stylist, taking on the role of the fashion director at A+ and eventually the editor in chief.

Her success, she believes, comes from being a quick learner and her willingness to explore.  

“I must have been really irritating to everybody, disturbing them when they were working and I was asking questions, curious. Step by step, I learned how to write and how to edit, just going with the flow. I wasn’t planning to be editor in chief, that’s for sure.”

***

In 2004, she faced another challenge, when a Garden of Eden photo montage of her and entertainer Anjasmara posing seminude raised the ire of some religious groups when it was shown at the Jakarta Biennale. They, along with the artist Agus Suwage and photographer Davy Linggar, were questioned by the police.

It was the first real test of the obscenity law. Anjas, as a big-name celebrity, was the focus, but she and the others were dragged into it.

She says she was “stressed” by the case – in photos from the time, she looks thin and drawn – but she is adamant that she never felt she was in the wrong. The display was signed off by the government, shown on government premises and part of an international event, she points out.

“At that time, I couldn’t really talk much … I wasn’t scared, to tell you the truth. I knew I didn’t do anything wrong, I wasn’t breaking any laws. I learned a lot, but I didn’t regret anything at all.”

She chose to talk to only a few select media, most of them foreign.

“Everybody [the media] was attacking us, trying to grab another scandal out of it. There were some who said, ‘How come you didn’t apologize like Anjas did?’” she says of the entertainer’s decision to meet with the group which protested the photos. “And I said that’s Anjas’ right. It doesn’t mean because somebody reported me to the police that I should apologize to them. The only people I should apologize to are my parents.

“My father said to me, ‘Sometimes we have to go face these things’,” she says, adding that her parents, especially her deeply religious father, provided her the support she needed.

A lot of good things have happened in the five years since the media frenzy; she quit smoking, she became editor in chief of A+ and, she says quietly, she found out who her friends are.

She also became the muse for designer Edward Hutabarat for his Part One collection, hailed for putting a modern, haute couture spin on batik.

“Thank God, I was the muse for several designers, not just for a season but for quite some time. Edo is somebody I really look up to. I did my first show with him at age 14, I was very scared of him because he was such a maestro.”

That term “muse” seems a backhanded compliment, the passive, compliant object of inspiration for the grand master. In Edo’s telling, he also has learned a lot from Izabel, whom he describes as a fun and natural friend, from their travels around the country researching a still-to-be-published book on Indonesian handicrafts.

“She’s my icon, my inspiration,” he says. “She’s a great friend to talk to, because she knows about everything – fashion, art, wine and dine – and there aren’t many models like that.

“And she’s never fake, she doesn’t want anything from you. She can mix with anybody and everybody, because everybody is important to her.”

She can, he adds, adapt to any situation, take the bus if she needs to, or hobnob with the red-carpet crowd. When the situation calls for it, she can get down and dirty with farmyard animals: In Komodo, during one photo shoot, she had to climb onto the back of a water buffalo, notoriously temperamental animals. The only way to keep him happy was to put her finger into his backside. So she obliged, and all went well.

“I think she is probably the only model who can say she has done that,” Edo jokes.

***

Giving up the catwalk is only one of the recent changes in her life. In March, she got married to man who, like her, is from a mixed Indonesian–European background. They wed in Bali, in a small ceremony for family and close friends; they then held a bigger celebration outside Bandung in late May.

She is still informing her husband, a former tennis pro who spent most of his life abroad, about how things work here. He proposed a reception at the five-star hotel he works at in Jakarta; Izabel, always practical and thinking ahead, knew that even having the local version of Heidi Klum at the door, deciding who was in and who was out, would not work. Inevitably, the guest list would balloon with those who showed up uninvited.

“Lots of people said to me, ‘Why wasn’t I invited to Bali?’,” says Izabel, who enlisted six of her closest friends, all unmarried, as her bridesmaids in Bali. “So this time, having it in Lembang, I knew that those who really want to come would make the trip.”

The modeling scene has changed since she started out, with many foreign models signing up with agencies here. “‘We’re being invaded’,” she jokes, mimicking the reaction of some to the plethora of white-skinned faces.

Izabel, however, is all for it, and hopes foreign models will come from Hong Kong, Australia, wherever, to make it a truly open market like it is in other world cities. Then Indonesian models will have to take the steps needed to shape up and make the grade, like she did by going abroad, making some mistakes and learning the hard way.

With “editor in chief” on her business card, she could have a blasé “it’s just fashion dahling” attitude about her past, making light of her modeling career as a mere stepping stone to where she is today. But she does not.

“For me, it taught me a lot. I met so many interesting people, from so many countries, races, backgrounds. It opened me up so much.”

And look where it got her.

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