Hayuning “Adra” Sumbadra realizes that growing up in a family that supported her dreams of becoming a fashion designer was a privilege that not all aspiring young fashion designers had.

When Adra was a teenager exploring her talents in designing clothes, her parents cleared a space on the second floor of their house in Ciputat, South Tangerang, to create a "studio" for her.

She even had a 6-square-meter cutting table, said Adra. A cutting table was one of the most important pieces of equipment for a fashion designer, but budding designers rarely had one.

“I remember that my college friends were willing to travel dozens of kilometers to my house to use the table," recalled the 22-year-old. "Lately, I started thinking, why don’t I share [the table] with more people?”

This idea led her to open her home studio as Kampung Mode, a coworking place for fashion designers. Dubbed a "one-stop space for creating fashion", she claimed it was the first of its kind in Greater Jakarta.

Deskmag, an online magazine that focuses on new ways of working and coworking spaces, calls places like Kampung Mode a "co-sewing space". Such facilities have been cropping up in countries like Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Several coworking spaces in Jakarta also offer facilities that could be suited to the needs of fashion designers.

Concrete Space, located on Jl. Pluit Timur Raya in North Jakarta, offers a photo studio that can be used for fashion shoots. Its spacious photo studio is equipped with backdrops, a three-point lighting system, furniture and a window for natural light.

Another is GoWork's Kemang X, which claims to be "a hub of food and fashion culture".

Adra manages Kampung Mode under partnership with Ruang48, a coworking space company based in Kemang, South Jakarta. She charges Rp 75,000 (US$5.3) per day or Rp 1.25 million per month for using Kampung Mode. The fee covers the shared use of two cutting tables, desks, lockers and an array of sewing equipment.

Kampung Mode also offers sewing services and a photo studio for photographing their completed designs. The photo studio costs Rp 1.5 million for a six-hour session.

“Through Kampung Mode, I want to gather more young fashion designers to work and collaborate here, so that we can grow together,” said Adra.

“We will regularly hold a variety of classes to attract people to come and become familiar with the place,” she added.

Adra is known for founding the fashion brands Adraworld and Untukmu. One of her notable collections at Adraworld is “KFR”, which was inspired by the hoaxes and fake news that ran rampant in the digital era.

Another is “Jane”, a collection that was created in collaboration with abstract painter Jane Gabriella, who is autistic.

Imanzah “Iboy” Nurhidayat, an activist with Fashion Revolution Indonesia, said that while there was no urgent need, coworking spaces for fashion designers could have a positive impact on the fashion industry, as well as for aspiring designers.

In an era when most fashionistas favored products from fast fashion brands, Iboy said that nurturing positive environments for local fashion designers was important.

“These local designers are seen as competitors by the established big fashion companies. But rather than seeing them as competition, we should focus more on creating a new culture that localizes our fashion industry,” he told The Jakarta Post on recent Sunday.

Iboy added that these "big fashion brands" were facing environmental issues due to their rapid output and overproduction. Adding to these was the large carbon footprint the companies left in supplying their products to foreign markets.

Hence, environmental activists had called for the development of more local fashion businesses, so that Indonesians had the option to buy more locally produced clothing.

Not only would this support small businesses, but it would also contribute to reducing the environmental damage caused by the fashion industry.

Adin Ibrahim, who is part of Adra’s generation of fashion designers, called on aspiring young fashion designers to be bolder in expressing their creativity.

“I’ve known Adra since our master study in Milan [Italy]. Back then, we learned to think and see things from a global point of view," he said. "Now that we’re back in Indonesia, we should relearn things and search for our true selves within our Indonesian identity.”

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