Obin the Original

Obin is renowned for taking the lead in producing superb traditional cloth for today’s times, and for speaking her mind.

By Bruce Emond

ObinObin’s now famous daily attire is a traditional cloth blouse and wrap skirt, her hair pulled back in a bun. There is no better advertisement for one’s products than wearing them, and wearing them well.

“So what do you know about me?” she asks pointedly, lighting up one of the many cigarettes she will smoke during the next hour.

In short, here it is: Born Josephine Komara, she spent most of her childhood until her teens in Hong Kong. Returning to Indonesia (her formal schooling ended in elementary school), she found her calling in the 1970s and early 1980s with the woven textiles and batiks she had collected from the age of 17. She then developed innovative methods in producing traditional woven fabrics, and married them with batik motifs. In 1989, she opened her first boutique in Japan for discerning customers; today, she makes sales in Europe, the United States and the Middle East.

Her BIN House showroom in Menteng, Central Jakarta, is an understated and becoming emporium for Indonesian textiles and Indonesiana, with cloth toys in a corner, jars of traditional snacks, the famously refreshing iced tea that itself is worth a visit and, of course, the rows of gorgeous cloth that pay homage to the country’s artisans.

Underpinning all of this is her reputation. Even Edward Hutabarat, the designer credited with spearheading the resurgent interest in batik as fashion, defers to Obin as the real authority on the fabric.

The authority herself is modest about her talents and role. She is not a designer, nor a batik artist, she insists, but a tukang kain, a cloth-maker.

“I have a high profile,” she says dryly. “I don’t know who made it so high, I think it was the press ... And I didn’t even have a videoclip!”

Nevertheless, there is something slightly theatrical in Obin’s alternately arched and booming delivery, or the sedate but firm gesturing for her assistant to bring a piece of cloth or a cherished book (consider too her shows: colorful productions, sometimes featuring young stars prancing along the catwalk, proving that traditional designs can be contemporary and fresh).

This showmanship combines with her warmth, earthiness and generosity of spirit. During her appearance, barefoot, on the talk-show Rossy earlier this year, she taught a university student the proper way to wrap a piece of her cloth, carrying a price tag of several million rupiah. Then she gave it to her.

Obin appears as a woman of substance, and a complicated, original character.

“She shows it’s not the way a woman dresses, but what is in her mind,” Edward says. “She’s a very futuristic thinker.”

“I’m always searching for clarity ...” Obin says at one point. “I believe in magic, it’s in the air. But you have to make it happen.”

Dedicated to Her Craft

“When I’m not doing anything, I’m very busy,” she says and taps her temple. “Things are festering ... What motivates me? I don’t know. I just do. I believe in good work. Life is about dedication, putting everything you’ve got into it, research, curiosity, sense of exploration, thoughts and intelligence, and your hopes, then you will not have a problem.”

She fears that Indonesians are losing the ability to listen in this mulifaceted society, where “every facet has its own facet”, and calls for more dialogue.

“As an Indonesian woman in the not-so-young generation, I think we have a lot to do. Dialogue is very important, fashion is dialogue. There has been a breakdown in dialogue, for many reasons. I see parents talk to their children; the children make demands or complain to their parents,” she says.

“Many of my friends of the younger generations, teenagers, they even have a problem expressing themselves, describing something. This is a ball. This is a round and colorful ball ... Our children are never taught to describe, the training of expression. To live is to express. A composer or a singer lives to express.”

This is a symptom of the pop culture and cyber-centric times, she believes, where we expect to gain everything, including knowledge, instantaneously, at the press of a button, where shortcuts trump putting in hard work and culture is taken for granted.

“Indonesia is a great country,” says Obin, who recently helped create the new uniforms of Garuda Indonesia, using traditional cloth. “I have a friend who says, I want to make Indonesia big. They can say that because they’re 30 years old. I say, Indonesia has always been great.”

She reflects on the dynamic 1970s, when Indonesia was in the early throes of development and she was developing her fabric business. She studied the traditional ways of the artisans, using raw silk in plain fabric that was used for upholstery and furnishings – “I was known as the lampshade lady,” she jokes.

In the early 1980s, she started using ikat, supplying her fabrics to decorate the swank new hotels and big corporate offices setting up in town. She was one of the few in the field, using her knowledge to promote traditional fabrics in exhibitions and other forums.

In 1985, however, she hit a difficult point in her life. She declines to give details, merely quipping that her friends will laugh at her for talking about it. She says that her husband, Ronny Suwandi, an anthropologist who has been a guiding force in BIN House, always warns her to watch what she says.

“Everything, except my son and my mother, was colorless, tasteless. I cared for the fabric, for the people who made it, but I was in a situation that was just blank.”

One day, in her darkened room behind drawn curtains, she decided to go through the two chests in  her room that contained the fabrics she had lovingly collected over the years. As she peered at them through the shaft of light stealing into the room, she realized that each piece cloth told a story, through its motifs and the community of artisans who created it.

“I went through all of them, the woven fabrics from one, and the batiks from other, and it opened my mind again, rekindling that dialogue that I had with these pieces. I never went to school, I never studied them, so everything I knew about textiles was from books and seeing them made.”

The experience restored her focus on her real passion. She experimented with fabrics, eventually producing softer fibers that allowed the application of batik. It was her “eureka” moment: producing batik designs on Indonesian woven fabrics, instead of imported cottons and chiffons, to create the ultimate Indonesian cloth. She founded BIN House in 1986.

Twenty-four years later, batik is back in a big but not always beautiful way, worn by socialites, powerful young businesspeople and seemingly everybody else. Obin scoffs at the claim that it has been revived from fashion’s graveyard.

“There is more consciousness about it, but it never died.”

One thing she cannot abide is Indonesians calling their own traditions “ethnic” (or, even worse, exotic). “It’s traditional classic,” she declares. “It’s about how you look at it, about having a modern outlook on traditions.”

Edward says he and Obin are two of a kind, sharing the same vision and mission to empower traditional craftspeople, those far from the catwalk. Their attempts are not always welcomed.

“We both speak about the facts, and that often bothers people,” he says.

For the People

Obin is famous for her love of people, regardless of who they are or where they come from. She excuses herself at one point to farewell an elderly security guard who, after a bout of illness, is retiring. She tells him to come back whenever he feels like it.

As a longtime customer arrives, she informs her of a mutual friend’s illness. She has sent over food from her kitchen.

“I love people, I love to walk along the street, smile at people, I love to hug people,” she says.
Obin surrounds herself with young people, similarly to her late, dear friend, the director Teguh Karya, known for his retinue of young actors performing in intimate human dramas; she describes him as “the male me”.

Nevertheless, she says she has always been an old soul. She pulls out stacks of Hollywood fanzines from the 1950s, and collections of school textbooks dating back 30 years.

“Imagine all the cloth that I mentioned. In 1975, collecting antiques, bronzes, furniture, fabric,
from all over. Imagine what I have seen and experienced. And how I feel now,” she says.

“My exploration of Indonesia goes on, and will always go on.”

As she speaks, a pretty young woman in leggings and a black bolero enters. Obin greets her, and  the woman says she has an appointment for a wedding fitting.

“Darling, why do you want us to do it? Is it your mother, or is it you?”

“No, I love your batik,” is the answer.

That’s what Obin wants to hear. She gives the bride-to-be ideas for what will suit her.

As she young woman moves on, Obin says, “That is the children of the future, although I probably won’t be around.”

But even without her, the cloth speaks for itself.

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