Civil servants must wear Javanese attire

Surakarta Mayor Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has obliged all civil servants under his municipal administration to wear full, traditional Javanese attire once-a-week, every Thursday.

The rule aims to help preserve local culture and empower small-scaled industries.

The decision, which was put forward in a mayoral decree issued on Monday, was implemented on Thursday by the mayor and Deputy Mayor FX Hadi Rudyatmo.

Jokowi wore a khaki beskap landung (traditional shirt for males) and a sogan batik cloth with a parang motif along with sandals and the Javanese headdress, blangkon.

Rudy wore an outfit of a similar style.

The regulation will become effective for thousands of civil servants from next Thursday.

“I just want to prove it to myself that this is not complicated at all. This is practical,” Jokowi said, commenting on the costume he wore that day.

He added that he did not intend to create a burden for civil servants in issuing the decree.

He argued one would not need a great deal of money to own an outfit like the one he wore that day.

“This beskap of mine only cost me Rp 80,000. You don’t need to buy an expensive one. What matters most is its function,” Jokowi said.

For female civil servants, attire will comprise kebaya shirts, batik skirts, konde cepot hairstyles and sandals.

“The kebaya and beskap are for official wear for Thursdays, replacing the previous Kresna batik uniform, which will now be worn on Wednesdays,” said Etty Retnowati, the head of the Municipal Employment Agency (BKD).

The municipal administration presently has 10,168 employees.

They are all content to pay for the new working clothes out of their own expenses, according to their respective incomes. The quality of the materials, therefore, will depend on their personal choices.

The designs, however, are predetermined.

For the design, the municipal administration has invited the fashion association designer, Ratna Busana, to be a consultant.

Chairwoman of the association, Danarsih, said the administration wanted to make the design for
the traditional attire as plain as possible, so making them practical to wear, yet still in accordance with the prevailing book of standards, or pakem.

“[The original design on] kebaya is not practical. What we have done is to create a kebaya that is more practical and simpler. The batik, similarly, is designed to be ready-to-wear,” Danarsih said.

She was referring to the female batik, which was redesigned to resemble a ready-to-wear long skirt, so that the wearer could easily put it on. The original style requires some work on the cloth before being worn.

“This is practical but is still according to the pakem,” she said.

A civil servant from the municipal administration, Siti Wahyuningsih, warmly welcomed the policy, saying that wearing traditional clothing once-a-week would be no burden on her.

“It is not complicated for me,” she said.