Iwan Tirta Private Collection

The 11th Plaza Indonesia Fashion Week saw 23 designers presenting 19 shows in five days.

What was new with Plaza Indonesia Fashion Week, now in its 11th year?

The five-day fashion show, which ended on Friday, saw some of the 23 designers staying safe within their comfort zones, while others rose to the challenge of taking a few risks to create something ingenious. Here are some of the highlights:

BIN House

Expectations ran high for veteran brands to stay relevant with an increasingly younger audience, especially with BIN House headlining the opening show at the fashion week.

Renowned designer Josephine “Obin” Komara offered her vision for her fashion house through a 30-piece collection titled “Now”, featuring clothes that were refreshingly vibrant yet relaxed.

Batik was worn the usual way as skirts, but contrasting fabrics of fluorescent colors like lime green, magenta, admiral blue and canary yellow.

There were plenty of draping details and texture for outerwear and belting. Loose Encim and Kutubaru kebaya showed beautiful, asymmetrically designed tops with generous amounts of lace.

The pieces were still very much traditional, but their currency lay in the styling and mood: sneakers, un-coiffed hair and the modernity of the women modeling and dancing throughout the show.

Model and actress Kimmy Jayanti opened the show twirling as director Jay Subyakto’s film on the fashion house was screened in the background. Androgynous model Anast Lie brought a masculine, modern air to a feminine collection.

Safe to say, the show was what BIN House has been presenting year after year. But the entire front row of the audience, showed up in fully styled hair and makeup wearing BIN House with their daughters, is proof that the designer gives what women want — and they love it.

Iwan Tirta Private Collection

Just like witnessing a fairy tale come to life, a swarm of ethereal-looking girls glided down the runway with their Rinaldy A. Yunardi metal ear cuffs and ronce, and coordinating slippers by Marista Santividya.

It’s apt that the latest Iwan Tirta Private Collection was titled “Nuswantara”, a Sanskrit word for the universe and everything within.

The show’s premise was, according to creative director Era Soekamto, “appreciating our roots and embracing the future”, although these roots were not entirely Indonesian. The Boketan and Hokokai motifs, for example, were influenced by European and Japanese cultures. But when applied with the Chinese-influenced megamendung (rolling clouds) batik motif, they became familiar and fresh, emanating the spirit of the country’s late batik maestro Iwan Tirta.

The collection showed serious layering achieved not only through the cutting but also through experimenting with materials. And the “batik play” was extended here. In one outfit, a sleeveless organza top was paired with a hybrid slip dress: part cotton viscose, part satin silk and part weave. Motifs were applied to both layers, giving a 3D illusion. Coats and capes were fitted very well, perhaps the best from day one of the fashion week.

SebastianRed

The SebastianRed Spring/Summer 2018 collection by designers Sebastian Gunawan and Cristina Parese oozed romance. Maybe the husband-and-wife team were taking a personal trip down memory lane with the collection, titled “Reminiscence”.

But reminiscence is such an abstract concept it can be easily lost in translation.The designers’ intentions were to interpret photographic history in the fabrics, showing how we saw the world from monochrome to color. The concept was visible in a few outfits, but not apparent in all.

One look exemplified this photographic styling at its best: a shimmery, silver caped dress made of velvet. The multi-paneled dress, made of alternating layers of lace in different colors resembled film negatives. A baby pink tiered dress resembled the female silhouette of antique daguerreotype sittings.

Color was kept to a specific palette — baby pink, beige, gray and baby blue — to reflect photographic progression.

There were risky material combinations too, like lace with tweed, which require an acute sense of proportion to select and fit correctly. But the designers dared anyway.

The best items, however, were the simplest: a black jumpsuit with a cape looked razor-sharp in its precise cut.

The finale was a simple black dress made of silk satin with a printed train that seemed like it was pinned only at the sides. It was reminiscent of the precision we saw in Dior’s Raf Simons, and certainly turned heads.

Lucky Trend x Danjyo Hiyoji

Every Danjyo Hiyoji show has always held a surprise, making it a highly awaited event on the fashion calendar. Designers Dana Maulana and Liza Mashita know how to work a crowd. In fact, the audience at the Danjyo show was the largest, the boldest, the most fashion savvy and the most responsive, giving applause after applause even before the show had finished.

The first outfit initiated a wave of ooh’s and aah’s: a matching pair of a pinstriped long-sleeved top with rounded cuts and patches with drawstring pants, both made from cotton.

The outfit was styled with ribbon earrings, cyclops sunglasses and a psychedelic screen-printed bum bag that looked like dungarees and doubled as a backpack, which was worn on the waist. It screamed millennial and street, but at least it wasn’t entirely Hypebeast.

The surprise? As the last model walked off stage, a flock of models, now wearing outerwear printed with the same motifs as the bags, stormed down the edges of the catwalk. The lights went off, and UV lights shined to reveal glowing neon colors.

They’ve done it before, but it’s always fun to see the wonder of technology. It was, as per the collection’s title, “Splendor Force”.

— Photos courtesy of Plaza Indonesia Fashion Week

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