I have always been a fan of circus then I found this book The Circus. 1870s – 1950s at the oversized book corner in LCF library. I took so many pictures and one that strikes me the most is the poster of a sideshow to display human with uncommon body condition: Siamese twins, bearded lady, Tom Thumb, etc. They transform the ‘freaks’ that are feared and looked down by society into a source of amusement.
I heard once from my colleagues that “Lo kayak ikan hias, deh” (You look like a decorative fish)– because I’m colorful and walked around the office a lot (I was working with a lot of different division and I just can’t sit down too long so I wandered a lot). I felt good in one way cause it’s a cute fish right and they’re colourful.
But at the same time, these fish are locked in an aquarium and just there to literally decorate people’s place and become the source of amusement (especially for kids!). For me, my self-expression is a mean to fulfil self-satisfaction (and I’m pretty sure it’s the same for some other people), but it is often seen as a source of amusement. I found this similar to the sideshows in circus performances, that’s why I’d love to apply the ironic concept.
So a number of people will be chosen to be in the exhibition, and I’m thinking of choosing people with different styles and background that have unexpected stories. Each person will get a booth or a corner for their own, then the booth will be decorated in tandem with their preferences/personality.
For contingency plan, I’m thinking of making AR space (so people can access the room with the booth on their phone, but they need to be in a quite large room to be able to walk all the exhibition). Or a virtual exhibition in website like this gallery. Or creating a 3D animation of the people with my own reinterpretation? So sculpting them with 3D? Or collaborating with illustrators to reinterpret my interviewees with their art? (but of course, will put consideration who’s the best suit the interviewee’s preferences). Yoshitaka Amano’s illustrations for Vogue Italy Jan 2020 are really good!
I’m still not sure actually about the content, but I’m sure I’ll move it online.
As I decided to focus on the documentation of individuals personal style in Indonesia, I tried to observe some books and websites that focus on doing street style.
1. FRUiTS and STREET
Made by Shoichi Aoki, both FRUiTS and STREET are one of the best street style documentation. FRUiTS is also the first magazine that spread the Harajuku street style crazed. Unlike the newer publication, FRUiTS purely filled with pictures with no interviews. It focused on capturing the style and details of individuals in Tokyo (FRUiTS) and London (STREET). I also think that these two cities have the strongest street style.
2. NYLON STREET
NYLON did this book in 2006. It’s focusing on several cities: London, Copenhagen, Berlin, Paris, New York, Melbourne, and Tokyo. The format is still the same with other street styles, but as a magazine, NYLON added the photos with the individuals’ name, age, and several casual questions.
3. DROP Tokyo
Out of all the examples, DROP Tokyo has the hugest base community as it is not only in Tokyo, but also Kansai, New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Korea, Taiwan, and–to my surprise!–Bangkok and Vietnam (on Instagram). South-East Asian country–except for Bangkok probably–are being looked halfway when it comes to fashion. So this is a positive sign. Created in 2007, Drop Tokyo has been the first fashion forum that discovers the “faces” that symbolize Tokyo’s next-generation streets.
On their home, the photos (on the left) I think updated real-time with their Instagram.
The gallery for street style snaps, they compile the photos from all the countries where Drop Tokyo located.
Each person got at least 2 pictures taken
They did some small interviews as well. Longer than NYLON, but enough to cover more topics to start a conversation. But somehow this stopped in 2018.
4. Tokyo Fashion
From all these examples, I think Tokyo Fashion is the closest to what I want to do. They snap street style but also create articles and guides for experiencing fashion in Tokyo (though the last one is written in 2018. This struck me: do people don’t care about these article/interview or it’s just not the content needed or they just simply not able to do it anymore (as from what I see, they’re talking more about release of collections, and other information on brands that probably is faster to know from the designers/brands itself)? And I understand for street style you can’t take too much time of the person). But it’s fun to see that they linked their snaps with brands that they wear and their music preferences.
On the website, written “Fashion and music are closely linked. Many fashion designers are inspired and influenced by their favourite bands and musicians. In turn, bands and musicians are some of the most influential fashion icons in the public eye. We believe that Tokyo street fashion presents a fantastic opportunity to explore the relationship between musical tastes and fashion sense in Japan.” Interesting! I also think that music has such a strong influence on fashion.
This is also interesting, from primary research I found that my target audience is either drawn to a brand and look for people who wear it or vice versa. Tokyo Fashion asked what brands did the people that got featured in it wearing (so their readers can easily access the brands) and on their website, they grouped the photos according to the brands they’re wearing (so their readers can go to their favourite brands and find who and how to wear them). This can be one of the ideas for the website’s revenue streams.
Tokyo Fashion solely focuses on Japan (Harajuku, Shibuya, Shinjuku & others). Its gallery is less crowded than Drop Tokyo, might be because they have less to cover.
Another thing that I like about Tokyo Fashion is they’re documenting fashion moments and interviewing people on the streets more intimately (though, again, the last video is from 2018). But from the videos, I’ve seen positive responses about the individuals.
This is one thing that I want to do with my interviewees for GILIGILI.
5. @jogjastreetstyle
The only platform in Indonesia in this list and probably the only one. Well, we also have @lookbookindonesia and @ootdindo (inactive since 2018) but they collected photos from users and not taking it themselves. Also, the style that gets represented is similar to each other and they tend to favour influencers. So I don’t think they’re the right platform to look into. On the other hand, @jogjastreetstyle is more diverse and raw. I found this while desperately looking for Indonesian street style and turned out the owners and I followed each other on Instagram. I got the chance to talk and hear about its creation and the impact @jogjastreetstyle has in Jogjakarta.
A lot of people messaged them saying they’re grateful that the account exists as it encouraged them to be braver on expressing personal style. A lot of street style accounts emerged after the success of @jogjastreetstyle. They got covered by media and did an exhibition in 2016 by showcasing photographs of individuals chosen with their stories. The interesting factors (like how someone looks like a hardcore punk on the outside but actually a Sufi and gave a speech once a week–was off the record tho). But this twist makes it interesting–you can not always judge a person based on their appearances–there are a lot of factors that influenced their decisions. This is what I want to convey with GILIGILI. I feel so grateful that Tita (one of the two owners of @jogjastreetstyle) was very open on the experiences and provided me with a lot of insights.
One more thing, on their account @jogjastreetstyle, wrote not literally on the street–which means this condition not only happen in Jakarta–even in Jogja people don’t have the street to express themselves. But they named it street style otherwise since after doing some research, they found that street style itself is the spirit and it doesn’t have to be on the street.
Also, I’m interested in this one essay I read by Luvaas B about street style in Indonesia. When he came and tried to do street style in Jakarta and Bandung (see the essay here), he was bedazzled by how the ‘street’ is indoors and it is hard to get ‘cool’ people with ‘style’. He felt that his style radar (that built up taking street style in the US) flawed.
While the concept of ‘cool’ probably differ across the border, the reason why he felt that his style radar flawed in Indonesia because he looked at the wrong place. If, as quoted from the essay, street style is documentation of exceptional style which ‘superadded, rare, desired quality’ (Johnson-Woods and Karaminas 2013: 13), that applies to probably no more than one in a hundred people, then the ‘cool’ people must be a niche population in Indonesia.
As street style is an unfamiliar concept, people did not practice it and to find those who are ‘cool’ and have ‘style’, I think Luvas lacks the knowledge of the community on where to find the right folk to interview and the right place to conduct his experiment. I think this is the clear gap that I can fill in, as I’m an Indonesian and I belong in the community. I believe I’d be able to find the right places and the right people by networking and connecting between circles starting from my own.
Besides all the above, a lot of different documentations like Korean @streetper or a very niche @thats_so_csm. Or a more non-fashion like @shanghaiobserved and one of my personal favourite @humansofny. I think it would be nice if I can help people to open up and share stories like @humansofny does.
All in all, I can see that narrative is still something that is missing for fashion. Documentation like this is good for the sake of documenting it as inspo and anthropology. But I want to connect fashion with narratives–with stories of the wearer. Why they chose to wear what they wear today? How did the style evolve before it got to its present time? I wanted to create an open environment for people to express themselves and to share their stories so the readers will understand their decision making better. To understand people and remove judgement/prejudices.
I interviewed 29 people that fall into my target audience category (male and female, 18–30 years old, live in big cities, and interested in fashion) for my primary research. I did it all together with the interview about the COVID-19 pandemic. But for this one, I want to know their stories of self-expression from the first time until now. The questions are:
Is it hard to express yourself through fashion within your environment?
What do you think about the representation (beauty ideal, body image, style preferences) by media and brands in Indonesia? Are they diverse enough?
If you ask the question to yourself–do you feel represented by media/brands in Indonesia?
What kind of content that you’re engaged the most? Where do you consume these contents?
What kind of content you’re hoping to see on self-expression? (no content like that or there are some and you wish to see more of them)
These are basic questions–I’ll adds more questions according to their answers. These questions aim to know their stories, the environment, what type of media and social channels that they use to further prove what I’m going to make.
The schedule for interviews. I did it leaving 6pm open since it’s Ramadhan month and 6pm is the time for breaking the fast. The name below is the name of the potential interviewee but I haven’t talked to them.
Some of the evidence I can show (some people didn’t want to be recorded and some wanted to do voice call instead):
Dodo, 21
Ezra, 20Nabila, 24Dhai, 21Ikhsan, 20But I have all the voice recordings!
Notes taken from the interview (mixed with the dressing up during pandemic interview written half and half in Bahasa and English):
On the left all kinds of content ideas I’m thinking possible to make if people willing to contribute.
From the interviews, there are some points to highlight:
Rising demand for diversity. It is starting to be more diverse now, but some people still feel like brands are just jumping on the diversity bandwagon or doing a gimmick. They want to see if this will lasts.
No media focusing on the topic too–though some discussing it through other issues (e.g. femininity and gender), somewhat it’s always only the tip of the iceberg.
In Indonesia, the beauty ideal is fair skin, long-haired, and you’ll get plus points if you’re caucasian looking–or half Indonesian. A lot of caucasian models gracing brand catalogues, even for celebrity and influencers, the one that always put in the spotlight are these type of girls. In reality, women in Indonesia have a darker complexion. For men, the beauty ideal is not really a problem, but they have a problem with body image–as the men represented and loved most is the alpha male, masculine type with the slim, fit muscle-y body. None of the movies or tv series shows a bigger, chubby build as the main protagonist. And women have been struggling with this body type problem too. For people aged 19–64 years old in Indonesia, the average height for men is 168 cm and women 159 cm. But media, brands, and designers are using tall models that don’t represent the real people. Some said that it’s hard to get the right size for their body types and the shape of the clothes don’t look as good when it’s worn on their body.
Especially to the queer community, as a Muslim majority country, it’s been hard for them to express themselves, especially within their families.
The Muslim women who wear hijab are not all adhering to the ‘standard’ modest wear. And these type of hijabers wanted to see more contemporary hijab fashion editorial.
For people who are commuting with public transportation, they tend to tone down (not wearing anything flashy and jewellery) and cover themselves because they don’t feel secure being the centre of attention (infrastructure problem). Most of them are also toning their style down to respect their environment (especially family and workplace) and they want to avoid hearing negative reactions or remarks (they usually experienced it before).
The media or brands usually expose certain groups of influencers or celebrities and not ‘real people’. Some even said that they don’t trust influencers as much anymore since they’re getting paid to say what they say.
Majority of people said that now they know where and with who they can feel safe, and they realised if they just ignore what people say, their environment will get used to what they wear and it will be more comfortable. Even though some comments still come out once in a while, they just brushed it off.
Most of them look up to brands and icons from outside of Indonesia because they feel more connected with the style from outside of the country–this also made me realize that Indonesia doesn’t have “style icons”. Almost all of my interviewees chosen foreign people/brands or the more contemporary and edgy brands (like @dibbaofficial, @aestheticpleasure_, @calliecotton). We have some fashion influencers, but like I said they have similar styles (probably because they got endorsed by the same brands too) and just like a theory I found before, these influencers create a certain standard, where followers copy the influencers’ ideals in hope to conform with the current social norm (Brucculieri, 2018), resulted in creating a homogenized expression of self. People think the ones with the most followers are the ‘attractive’ ones, while I think people should know there are different styles out there and I want them to dress and express themselves, not to just copy influencers.
They usually search for people or brands (so the flow is either they follow the people then see what brands they’re wearing or they resonate with a certain brand and look for who’s wearing it).
They want to see content on real people that they can relate to in terms of style. They want to know more about how (how to style, how-to DIY tie-dye your shirt, how to deconstruct your clothes, etc) and why they wear something. Types of content that offer how outside of fashion (e.g. cooking and gardening) are also the ones that they engaged with the most. The channels are Instagram (saved feature), Youtube, TikTok (for the younger ones, 19–22 years old in this case), and Pinterest (mainly for inspo).
Most of the interviewees are familiar with Instagram filter, and they played with quizzes and background filters. I think it’ll be a good engagement for the brand if we can do a collaboration with artists to create that kind of filters as well. (Especially for artists who can’t make their own filters) so we can help them and get the engagement also from their followers.
From this interview, I decided to erase the nonconformist from my research questions, as people that I perceived as conformist or a conformist also have the drive to be a nonconformist as well, or doing it very subtly (like a friend of mine wearing the clothes that is the norm for her workplace but she adds polka dot patterns that are very her, or another friend wears flowery/patterned socks just to add the ‘me’ factor when she gets to work).
The first month of quarantine got me feeling lazier and lazier at home. A lot of uncertainties made me procrastinated. I decided not to do work and indulged myself ticking off my must-watch and must-read anime list. One day I saw a couple of friends dressing up at home and took pictures and had fun with it. So I instantly remembered the theory of enclothed cognition–does dressing up really help you with the stress in quarantine? Why?
I decided to run a poll on this on my Instagram and got around 40 people saying yes. I reached out to them and asked them for an interview and, if they’re willing, record some footages for me for the documentary.
In the first picture I asked whether they dress up at home because they’re tired of seeing themselves wearing pyjamas at home and the second one if dressing up lifted their moods. Surprisingly majority of people said yes!
So to these 40 people that answered yes, I asked them to do some recordings of themselves (ethnographic for me to see if it really help them, how they usually dress up, what kind of activities, and their environments to help me understand their decision making better).
In addition, after they sent me the videos (or maybe some won’t have time to make it–it’s okay) I interviewed them on the topic outside of pandemic too, for the purpose of making GILIGILI. Here’s my list of questions:
Do you try to dress up?
What kind of clothes? Why?
How do you feel when you dress up?
Looking at your wardrobe–do you feel the need to declutter them–finding old clothes that you actually want to wear again?
Tempted to buy or try to sell clothes?
‘Upstyle’ your pyjamas or dressing up for real?
Do you see your friends dressing up? Does that make you want to do it too?
Does your style/preferences change?
How do you feel about dressing up right now?
Do you think not dressing up making you lose your identity?
Does dressing up boost your mood on doing certain chores?
Does the effect remain for a brief/long time?
How does your environment (friends, family, partner) react to you dressing up (during pandemic)?
If this pandemic lasts a long time, what would you do about your outfit?
Do you plan what you want to wear after pandemic ends?
These questions are the basics, I will add more questions in accordance with the answers I got.
Another set of characters inspired by vintage victorian lamps and ivory goblets (I tend to draw with my book slightly slanted to the left so please bear with the tilted drawings) .
Just realised one of the characters resembles Lilymon.. watched Digimon recently so that’s probably why
The bird was my attempt on making non human so I tried copying some mythical birds.. not the best result but better than expected Forgot to save the image and couldn’t find the exact pink lamp that inspired me so the comparison is a bit off
As for these ivory goblets, I found them hilarious. I’m quoting Soth (2020) here, “a species of ivory oddities so exuberantly impractical, so elaborately absurd, that they appear, even in person, like spontaneous deformities of reality.” When I first saw them, a scene with a group of conceited, comical knights with strong individual characters trying to outdo each other immediately came in mind. But these are rough sketches and I’m thinking of refining it to look more like knights.
Anyway, I was having soooo much fun while drawing them. Probably the most fun I’ve been this quarantine.
It’s been three years since I’ve been properly drawing. I always draw rough sketches with people with no faces and faces without bodies.
Now I’m trying to draw properly again, as I want to learn more about 3D and animation later. I would love to see my drawings turn into an immersive experience. I found some images that piqued my interest:
Making characters out of an object or animal is really clever. We may or may not realise that we got influenced by our environment, the nature around us and inspirations can come from so many resources. I believe that fashion doesn’t have to be inspired by fashion–I enjoy looking at things outside of fashion to get inspired. And it’s been a desire of mine to create character designs as well.
This one is inspired by a grieving set designed for life on Mars. I added clock on the character as time is one of the symbol of death and the thin pillars looked like spider legs for me.
This second drawing is inspired by vintage victorian lamp. I made the top part of the lamp as its headdress and the body as a fan/stick. The shape of the dress reflected the bottom of the lamp, and the butterfly on top moved to the dress. This is the first time I’m using and combining a lot of colours so I’m really happy with the result! I’ll continue this practice!
After quite some time, I’m thinking of approaching the issue of self-expression through space–creating a place for voices from Indonesia–via multimedia. I’m always interested in a different medium and one of the drives for me going to London is to learn different ways of producing media beside still and film. I’ll need to look for the academic support–but I had a talk with my cousin who’s a communication officer for the government and she’s very frustrated as our government still using a traditional approach to convey messages to the public. For example, my cousin is responsible to create a campaign for kids and teenager to snack fruits at school and at home. But instead of using fun visualization and familiar language with the target, they stick to a conventional, full of text campaign that no one will even bother to read. From there I was thinking of making an interactive media or website to make fashion and its discourse ‘easy’ and find to digest. So I ask my cousin to help me in some ways on journalism, as I trust her ability and if this is something that I’ll continue in the future it would be beneficial to have a partner that in the same interest.
So I contacted another friend back home to help me with website development, design and editorial. I told friends and collaborators from my past projects about the idea and asked for their hands so I got a good team in Indonesia. I plan on finishing the concept in May/June so the team can start the preparation before or right after I arrived in Jakarta.
A lot of ideas came to my mind, I want to highlight Indonesian who rarely but deserve to be in the spotlight. I want to reinterpret Indonesian folklores to contemporary media like editorial, fashion films or VR. I want to make a section on the website full of traditional clothes with fun editing (e.g. Yu-gi-Oh!, pokemon or Cardcaptor Sakura power cards) with interactive settings so reading the history of the clothing won’t be boring. I want to make documentation on big fashion event and identity, but more through the social and psychological approach. The discourse that I want to talk about will be around body, identity, subculture and representation.
So I did some research about the interactive website on Awwwards.com (an awards website for design, creativity, and innovation on the internet) to discover unique interactive websites that I can probably base on (and trust me this website is hella fun!! I played many games, read stories and stuff from on the websites listed).
This was a fun research and intermezzo in one place. I’m happy 🙂
Beside of website, I’m thinking of holding an exhibition in Jakarta to present the work as I’m trying to make it into different mediums so I think it would be better to set up the proper way to enjoy them. This will be a lot of work and I need more collaborators/partners to work with, as well as experts to make sure that I’m doing it the right way without appropriating the culture (as traditional attire often sacred to certain culture) and Kirk from DLL to help me with the pathway–what to learn, which one first, etc. Meanwhile, I’m also going to cooking the concept more.
For my final project, I decided to continue on my research proposal from the last term: self-expression within the conservative environment in Indonesia. I chose the topic as it’s closer to what I want to do in the future, which is documenting the voices from Indonesia. Enclothed cognition is also a good base, yet it requires a more scientific approach and big primary research. I don’t think I can carry that alone. But for the self-expression, I realised that the topic is still very wide, and I got some takeaways from Ellie: 1. Have a solid definition on introduction for words like ‘non-conformist’ and ‘self-expression’ how do I approach these words? 2. The words ‘alienated from society’ need further validation–how is it play as actual experience of my subjects and what is the source that will be providing substantial evidence on these grounds? 3. Primary research: the sample is quite small and I have to be aware of the risk of generalization towards the result 4. FGD will need a coherent pre-established format that can direct the process in a controlled way. 5. I need to acknowledge that this could also potentially manifest in the opposite way as a possibility for biased observations – and being prepared to address that is vital for the validity of the research outcome (I agree, right now I’m trying hard to see and judge it more objectively). So these are the point where I need to fix and improve for my final essay later.
Cover of ‘Anak Perempuan’ zine by Nadia Rompas (@nadiarompas)
So, this idea of self-expression came from some findings that I stumbled upon. The first one is a zine by an Indonesian female photographer, Nadia Rompas, called ‘Anak Perempuan’. I addressed the issue here on the blog before, about intergenerational femininity, gender stereotypes, and identity. How your mom has very different ideas about how you should dress, who you should date, where you should work. So the girls presented in the zine are the ones that have two appearances: their true identity and their identity in their mothers’ eyes. The frustration is there, but I feel the need to know the reason why they keep dressing the way their mothers want despite not liking it–is it respect? Love?
Brent Luvaas’ blog
The second one is from an essay that I did for critical research, Shooting street style in Indonesia: A photo essay (2014) by Brent Luvaas. He is a socio-cultural anthropologist that has been photographing street style for years and has vast knowledge on the condition in Indonesia due to his student exchange days in the country. Despite being one of a country with fast-growing fashion industry and–at that time–brimmed with innovative personal style blogger, Indonesia remains absent on the street style map of the world. Even the concept of street style itself is foreign and different from its counterpart in western countries. He found that the street style in Indonesia shifted to indoor, especially malls. I was also interested in this before reading the essay and did my secondary research on Japan. Harajuku flourished to be one of the most stylish street thanks to the ban of cars on the street, allowing people to hang around and build communities there. They have the street–the space to grow. While Indonesia, in history, never have a fixed place where fashion is centralized.
Today, with Fruits (Japanese bespoke street style magazine) decided to quit prints because there is a lack of ‘cool’ kids on the street, signalling the death of the legendary site. This happened because cars are now allowed to move on the streets, internet enabling people to look for information and communicate from afar and the invasion of fast fashion interrupted the once creative scene. Young people in Japan don’t have to go all the way to Harajuku to get cool stuff or meet people, they can do it from their home, with a tap from their fingers. The communities are now spreading across Japan, no longer concentrated in one place.
Looking in the global discussion today, I think that is also the case with most countries. For people who love fashion, the inspirations are now in the shape of a square that they can scroll, no need to go to the library or buy dozens of magazine–unless you’re studying or working or interested in the industry–and most people aren’t. The fast-fashion brands also provide them with the latest runway look. Fashion has become easy–it is no longer a privilege exclusive for the rich and stylish.
But to be fair, Indonesia doesn’t really have a big history of fashion. The country’s weather is hot all year, a lot of people belong to the middle and lower class that they don’t prioritize their appearances, and the fashion heavily influenced by western culture, as this video by ESMOD Indonesia shows:
We can say that Indonesia has its own style, to begin with–like traditional kebaya and main batik, then it changes in accordance with historical events and then to modern style with the disruption of film and music from Western culture.
Another issue that attracted me is the topic ‘how much is your outfit cost’ became such a hot issue in my country after an Indonesian Youtuber did it. The video exploded as the people in it wore millions to hundred millions of Rupiah worth of clothes and accessories. And that is one thing that people in my country like: what are the rich are wearing and the price of the thing (I swear this is not me judging I have evidence for this e.g. LINE, a messenger app in my country has an official account that update news every day and their headline news always–always–include an article about the cost of someone’s something or how luxurious someone’s house or party). I’ll probably need to find academic journals to further proof the assumption.
The video ‘BERAPA HARGA OUTFIT LO?’ (how much your outfit cost?) by Youtuber YOSHIOLO got 5 million views despite being the seventh part of the series. The people interviewed mostly wear luxury brands, showing their economics and social status.
Another Youtuber, Mundut Mustopa also create a similar content with people from middle to lower class, wearing mostly local brands.
Seeing this makes me rethink my concept of fashion and style. People have diverse motivation behind wearing certain clothes or embracing a particular style, whether it’s for their own comfort, symbolic status, etc. Is that what fashion right now? Symbolic status of a person? Then is it also part of self-expression? What is self-expression here?
I had discussions with some people back in Jakarta and a part of them have a distinct style like arms full of tattoo, colourful hair and one person who bleached his hair and shaved his eyebrows, shared me his experience. His name is Stephen, a short male model.
Stephen (@stephtanius)
When he decided to change his look drastically, a lot of people told him that they’re uncomfortable and he looked weird–especially in my country there’s a myth if you shaved your eyebrows you can see ghosts (which clearly not true)–people hated it. When he entered the modelling career, due to his height, he struggled to get into an agency as the industry still favour the tall models and his look made it worse– too distinct and the agencies afraid he won’t get any jobs. Glad that he gritted his way now as people become more welcome towards a unique look.
There is also a group of young fashion enthusiasts that come to We The Fest (a huge three-day summer music festival in Indonesia that has the concept of Coachella–where you dress to impress) every year with strong individual styles.
@xaditya_ and their friends garnered a lot of attention when the photos circulated on Twitter. People either hated or loved it. The ones who love it adore them for being brave on expressing themselves, the opposite reacted with disbelief because the ‘males’ were wearing feminine, colourful clothes and some even called them ‘banci’ (a harsh word, equals with effeminate or pansy).
Their looks are certainly uncommon in Indonesia. They especially don’t sit well with the conservative folks. As a Moslem my self, though not very devoted, I understand that Islam and some other religion perceived homosexuals as taboo and they probably felt disturbed seeing the photos. But to attack the group I think is not a good way to communicate. With street harassment and catcalling, and the internet also not being a fully safe space, do we need to create contents to make them understand? Can we provide a safe zone for anyone to feel free to show their identities? Of course now it’s better for queer communities and minorities to be open in the public, but can we really ensure their safety?
The last one I saw the emergence of a new movement–that demands traditional clothes to rise again. An account on Instagram called @remajanusantara_. It’s a lookbook-like account with pictures of youth in Indonesia mixing traditional and modern, contemporary clothing.
I think it’s interesting because these youth are trying to make traditional cool again. They’re trying to look for a silhouette and identity unique to Indonesia. Yet this, along with topics that I explained before, rarely–almost none!–got highlighted or studied. There is only one zine I found named Buah (literally means fruit) made by an Indonesian diaspora, Teta, who lives in the US. She made it in order to connect with other Indonesian diasporas in different countries. Teta gave these people a corner to voice the Indonesian afar from home, how their heritage still attached to them even though they’re thousands of miles away.
Buah shows that with the help of the internet, we can connect and be vocal on issues of our own culture. This is in contrast with the shift–the street, the space–to the virtual sphere, has made Indonesia’s fashion scene grown bigger and bigger yet the documentation is very little. I wonder why and what can I do to fill this gap? I hope at the end of this unit I can find an answer to this.
