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The cultural entrepreneurship of Citayam Fashion Week
The Citayam Fashion Week shows how teens from Jakarta's periphery successfully constructed a new meaning, a trend, a new reality.
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Street fashion show: Girls walk on the crosswalk near Dukuh Atas MRT station in Central Jakarta as they take part in the hyped Citayam Fashion Week on July 23, 2022. The event was initiated by teens from the outskirts of Jakarta who claimed to be fighting boredom after two years of COVID-19 restrictions. (Antara/Hafidz Mubarak A)
Citayam Fashion Week (CFW) stole the attention of many on Indonesia’s buzzing social media landscape this year.
Borrowing and repurposing the meme of Paris Fashion Week, CFW featured youths from the “margins of Jakarta” – Sudirman, Citayam, Bojong Gede, Depok (affectionately known as SCBD) – who held flash-mob style “fashion shows” in an unconventional, first-of-its-kind way in the capital city.
The Dukuh Atas crosswalk where CFW took place has since gained iconic status as a spot for attention making, for fashion models, artists, businessmen and public officials.
CFW is somewhat reminiscent of the teens of Harajuku in Tokyo and the Kawaii/cosplay-culture in Causeway Bay in Hong Kong with their cosplay and turn-your-head body accessories and hair styles and complex personal back stories behind the upfront displays. CFW’s spontaneous emergence is a breath of fresh air in a pandemic-battered society where youth has suffered the collateral damage, deprived of opportunities for a normal outdoor life and, for many, to climb the socio-economic ladder.
In a viral TikTok video Bonge, one of the youth leaders in CFW, acknowledged that he made Rp 7 million (US$470) a day, most probably from his role related to CFW, which he used to purchase a motorbike for his mother. He and fellow SCBD-ers such as Kurma, Roy, Jeje Slebew, Alpin and others became the unlikely heroes in the TikTok-crazed world of Indonesia.
These teens deserve much applause for creating a new story as “cultural entrepreneurs” – not necessarily launching new ventures but “creating meaning” out of boredom and meaninglessness that has set a trend for others to emulate, including among the elites and in other cities in the archipelago.
That C-class teens can bash the conventional notion of fashion and turn it into a cultural trend has convinced us what teens are great at: changing the world! Cultural entrepreneurs are institutional entrepreneurs – they change meaning and at times, norms. Interestingly, the K-drama-like success stories of these teens ended a little prematurely as authorities took over to clear the streets.
