“Such a nice lurik you have on!”

“Pardon?”

“The shirt you’re wearing. It’s a lurik.”

“Um, thank you. It’s silk, from Obin.”

“[Pause] yes, Madam Obin is one of our most celebrated designers. But the pattern she used there on your shirt is called lurik, and it is from Yogyakarta.”

That was an actual conversation between me and an expat as we were leaving the Indonesian Services Dialogue late last year.

Before you, especially Indonesians, have a good chuckle, let me ask earnestly: How many of you actually know, own or have ever touched a lurik?

Let me ask further: How many of you have worn, or at least can tell the difference between jumputan, ikat, songket, ulos or other types of tenun?

Javanese batik has come a long way, thanks to breakthroughs in designs and technology fought for by modern fashion designers and the undying dedication of mostly low-paid artisans and craftsmen throughout the decades. Nowadays, you can easily find batiks in all ranges of color, price and function.

And ever since UNESCO recognized batik as part of world heritage a couple of years ago, Indonesians have worn batik on Fridays in droves, inspiring many expats to follow suit.

My maternal grandmother was a batik maker and shop-owner from Laweyan, the batik district of Surakarta, Central Java, where batik is said to have originated centuries ago. She was a true traditionalist who, upon hearing of the birth of a granddaughter, went to sit on the stool and started drawing on a piece of cloth for the newborn granddaughter to wear on her wedding day.

That this granddaughter remains single to this day is probably the reason why our family has quite a few vintage, hand-drawn batiks at hand.

So there, I’ve established my bond with and pride of batik. But you know what, I’m first and foremost an Indonesian.

Mostly influenced by mom, who has worn hand-woven (tenun) textiles from Toraja and Timor as sarongs to complement her contemporary kebaya since the 1980s, I grew up to love traditional textiles that Indonesia produces practically in every corner of the country.

They are colorful, diverse and carrying stories of their producers. And actually, in a very visually-pleasing way, they depict the national motto of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, or unity in diversity.

Some of my friends, notably not of Javanese heritage, have loudly lamented the continuous, though not always conscious, pushing of batik as a “national textile”. They claim that this movement is a lingering tail of the subtle “Javanization of Indonesia” of the bygone Sukarno and Soeharto administrations. They have a point, but unlike them, I’ll use a practical point over primordial pride.

Let’s go back to batik. It was losing luster in late 1970s and was practically assigned to dusty, matronly attire by the 1980s. Then came the late Iwan Tirta, bless his soul, with his breakthrough ready-to-wear batik, and a stream of other fashion designers late followed, reviving this piece of heritage.

Batik makers started getting orders in bulk, pushing them to rethink the hand-drawn technology. This new demand gave birth to mass printed batiks, injected a fresh stream into the textile industry and provided income for industry players. The eternal law of supply and demand managed the rest of it. Hand-drawn batik became one-of-a-kind masterpieces, hand-stamped batiks served as an affordable luxury, while the printed batiks catered to the masses.

It’s exactly the same thing that we must do now to ulos, songket, jumputan, lurik and countless other traditional textiles of Indonesia. Instead of hurrying to create “local” batik from thin air, like some misguided souls have tried to do in Aceh and Papua, each traditional group should dig deeper into their own heritage and find their genuine cloth.

The next step is to educate the market, and simultaneously, educate the artisans on modern takes of traditional textiles — in designs, raw material choices, production processes and marketing strategies (yes, looking at you, creative fashion designers and related government ministries).

It’s silly in the short run, and a disservice to Indonesian heritage and the textile industry in the long run, to push for “Acehnese” or “Papuan” batik when we could resuscitate Acehnese songket or Papuan tenun and introduce them en masse.

As always, I try to practice what I preach. Starting this Friday, I and Ruth, a fellow clotheshorse and cloth lover, will do some sharing through Twitter. We’re by no means experts, although with her textile background she is definitely better-resourced than I am. We won’t aim to guilt trip either (now looking at you, angry batik haters).

Our hope is that our Tweets on Indonesia’s traditional textiles will invite others to join in to share knowledge, spark networks and gradually raise interest so that “Batik Friday” will develop into “National textile Friday”.

Hopefully, we are able to achieve this transition before, umm, naughty neighbor Malaysia tries again to claim ikat and jumputan. See, now I scare you.

Lynda Ibrahim is a Jakarta-based writer and consultant, with a penchant for purple, pussycats and pop culture.

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