A marriage of ‘tenun’ & art

Fashion designer Agnes Budhisurya has added her signature brush work to East Nusa Tenggara’s exotic tenun woven fabrics to create flowing evening gowns that radiate elegance and glamor.

In her career, Agnes has established herself as a designer who emphasizes brush strokes on her women’s wear creations, mostly in the form of ultra-feminine romantic gowns.

When a number of local designers began to explore tenun in their collections, Agnes joined in – marrying the traditional fabric with her signature style.

For the first time ever, she brought a tenun-based collection to the runway, trying to incorporate the softness and lightness of her hand-painted outfits with the boldness of tenun, which softens the whole collection.

“I’ve designed some ready-to-wear outfits made of tenun, but this is the first time I have taken my collection to a fashion show,” Agnes said before the show, held in accordance with a fund-raising event to help children in East Nusa Tenggara.

Through the show, Agnes aimed to preserve traditional fabrics as well as help women in East Nusa Tenggara, many of whose livelihoods depend on making tenun.

Agnes mostly applied the combination to her trademark flowing yet floor-sweeping evening gowns, which radiated the collection’s elegance and glamor.

She explored Sumbanese tenun, which tends to boast bright hues like orange, yellow and blue, as well as dark colors commonly used in Flores, such as brown and black.

Her exploration of tenun came with its challenges.

“It has unique yet magical motives so I felt like I did not want to cut it,” Agnes says. “Besides, tenun has a strong character so not every fabric goes well with it. We need a good pairing that would make it nice to be worn and seen.”

In the process, she said, she first had to find the perfect paintings to be matched with the traditional textile to ensure they blended well and looked good.

For the collection, Agnes mixed the full-bodied tenun with fabrics like cotton, linen and tule. To make the combination of hand-painting and tenun work well, she added a touch of embroidery, which was similarly aligned with the strand of tenun.

She paired traditional outfits like Javanese traditional kebaya and baju bodo (flowing blouse from South Sulawesi) with tenun.

Agnes took her work down to earth by creating a number of casual outfits to show people that tenun can also be worn on a daily basis.

For her ready-to-wear collection, she put aside hand-painting in place of using tenun combined with other light fabrics.

She said that she was challenged to turn tenun, considered “heavy” and stiff by some, into ready-to-wear items that were casual, comfy and stylish at the same time.

“The ‘heavy’ tenun is usually made of pure cotton, which is very expensive. We designers can educate tenun weavers by encouraging them to create lighter tenun that is cheaper and much more comfortable to wear,” Agnes says.

She also created accessories made of tenun, from head pieces to bags, to complement the overall look. Another decoration was mamuli, jewels usually worn by women during traditional wedding ceremonies, which she used as head pieces and brooches in the collection.

While Agnes showcased women’s wear, designer Taruna joined in the show by staging a number of tenun-based men’s wear items. Just like Agnes, Taruna is also quite new in terms of creating outfits from tenun. For his tenun collection, he opted to go for ready-to-wear outfits, consisting of blazer, vest, shirt, clam digger pants and baggy pants.

Through the show, the designers were able to give tenun a fresh breath of life.