Clean Batik Initiative in the press

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/aug/23/indonesia-batik-makers-sustainable-methods

I am very glad to be reporting about the CBI again, as now they have come as far making it into the British Press! When I spoke to them, just over a year ago in Jakarta, they were only in their launching phase. This has spurred me on to get in touch with them to find out more, as the article is held quite general.

In Indonesia batik has regained popularity in the last couple of years and there is a lot of "fake" i.e. printed batik on polyester fabrics imported from China. In my Anglindo project I was experimenting with using less conventional patterns and motifs but the traditional wax method. Ideally I would be doing this the new, cleaner way.

It would be interested to know where this batik can be sourced from, if they take special orders and if there is any kind of guarantee for following certain guidelines.

Merapi - "the firey one"

Merapi, the most active out the  20 active volcanoes on Java has been erupting for a couple of weeks now with the last violent explosion on Thursday.   Surono, chief of Indonesia's Volcano Mitigation and Geological Disaster Agency, told the Australian newspaper Friday."The eruptions haven't stopped, the tremors are getting stronger, and one big explosion could be the result."

Indonesia is in fact the seismically most active country in the world with 17,500 islands sitting along the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Anglindo's 2nd season collection will be donating a percentage of our profits to the Merapi Relief Fund. We are based on the same island as Merapi, in Bandung which is some 400kms away.

Photographs courtesy of the national geographic.

Tarum means Indigo; visiting a natural dyes workshop

Near Ubud, Bali, by driving along windey roads through little kampungs (villages) towards the coast, Tarum natural dyes have their workshop. Mr. Iwan, the owner, was kind enough to show me around their lovely (really, it was, and mostly open air) workshop, explain the different dyestuffs and techniques they use and show me samples of work the have done previously.

Mr. Iwan Triadi and Mr. Made Arsana, the owners first started experimenting with natural dyes in 1998, predicting growth of the area in the next 6 years. The prediction has been fulfilled and a steady but "organic" growth of the business has taken place.

Tarum uses leaves instead of roots, bark and wood as the tree can keep on living and regrown the leaves which is a sustainable harvesting method. The dying method is inspired by traditional pre-chemical dyeing. Most of the natural blues, reds, blacks, purples, and browns on traditional Indonesian textiles come from two vegetable dyes: indigo blue, from the shrubs Indigofera tinctoria and suffruticosa, and morinda red, from Morinda trees. Mango is used for yellow and orange. The plants are locally (in their back yard or in Singaraja, north Coast Bali) grown except for the Secang which comes from West Java because it is not sufficiently available in Bali.

Leaves for dyeing grown in the back yard

Harvesting Leaves to be boiled down to the dye stuff

Indigo leaf

Colours

Tarum also have a spinning and weaving facility; a wonderfully airy, spacious, light room. I mentioned to Pak Iwan that this is a much nicer working environment compared to the stuffy garment manufacturing factories I have seen in Indonesia; Pak Iwan however laughed and said one of their companies biggest challenges is in fact to recruit workers as the young people would rather work in mobile phone shops, can you believe it!

Weaving studio

Hand loom

Being dying professionals, Tarum are constantly expanding their repertoire on dying methods and have some in stock which are looking very interesting to Studio Anglindo... 

Hold your horses! ... online shop issues...

Unfortunately due to living in SE-Asia and my bank account being in Europe, there have been some compliations which have lead to my online shops being FROZEN! Until I an defrost them, please just send me your orders via e-mail and the money can be transferred via bank transfer for now.

Other than that, I am very excited to be going to Bali on Saturday where I will be visiting producters of organic&naturally dyed cotton. Did I already mention, I'm VERY excited...! Anja Anglindo will be posting about this...

Also excting: presentation about ethical fashion at STDI Bandung... probably the first one ever here!

Ethical Fashion presentation at Sekolah Tinggi Desain Indonesia in Bandung presented by Ompei Parental Advisory; Maizir Firebolt and Anja Anglindo. Pop by!

National Museum Jakarta

The national museum (or Museum Gajah) in Jakarta I visited after the fashion show is definitely worth a visit to catch up on background information of the many cultures inhabiting Indonesia or for an overview of the many ethnicites on these islands. The spacious but dark museum houses a large variety of artifacts with explanations in English (if quite vague but not so badly translated to distort the meaning which cannot be taken for granted). I appreciated being able to examine the of the different cultures of Indonesia under one roof, looking at different techniques and materials and mentalities and comparing them to one another. After my first Indonesian fashion show, it made me think about from which backgrounds these students came from and which aspect of their unique culture influenced them in their designs.

What made me giggle to myself as well as shake my head in doubt was the photograph of a native Sulawesi lady with her bare breasts that had been censored. That photograph, I noticed afterwards, is the only one of a bare-breasted woman, although the traditional costume on many islands only covers the lower part of the body for both female and male; exhibiting these photographs has obviously been avoided although they are only documenting historical facts. History is being censored or avoided due t the ‘pornography legislation’, I assume. Also the grounds upon which a famous local singer of a boy band here has been send to jail for making private sex videos; him and his partner in crime have been banned from Bandung, the city where I live. A screaming reminder of living in a country with a different culture than my own; a reminder also of not taking the rights in Europe for granted. I also wonder if that photograph would have been censored in Sumatra or Bali.

Aaaaanywaaayy, back to the positive aspects of living in Indonesia, which DO outweigh the bad, by a ton of human teeth on a necklace.

Wood fibre cloth “serat kayu” was worn in many areas before cotton was imported. I was ignorant to the significance of this fibre, as the current batik trend seems to flooding textiles over all other traditional textiles. Below some piccies and also one of an ikat weaving device.

 

And please, ladies and gentlemen, would you take not of these hats! It made me want to get into the art of millinery! Is that an idea light bulb on that red hat? 

By the way that woven pig one IS a hat, but only special occasions of course. And the last picture shows adornment to be worn in your ear lobe.

 

And just for good luck, as it is this object's task....

 

ESMOD graduate fashion show 2010 Jakarta

Museum Nasional Jakarta

On my quest of hunting down the eco designers of Indonesia, I contacted Esmod Jakarta (esmod = a reputable group of fashion schools originating from Paris with schools all over the world). A few weeks later I receive an ethusiastic e-mail from a student, Anna Schmidt (coincidently a fellow half-German, her other half is Indonesian), happy to have found a fellow eco fashionista on the archipelago. We met for the first time last night, as she kindly secured me a ticket for her gratuate show, which I was very keen on seeing. What do the fashion designers of tomorrow in Indonesia have in store?

Modern Moslem

Anna Schmidt (front) and Angela Jessica Hadi (behind)

Angela Jessica Hadi

Pinky Andrea Purnama

Indo-Ethnic

Velika

Christina Geta Maria Pangaribuan

Superfuture

Soraya

Sherry Kandou

Priska Herlambang

Geek

Clarice

Rizqya

Tyas Pradninta

Warrior

Aan Ira Michelle

Zico Halim

Goth

Endriani

Yevi Yunita

They have a lot in store for the fashion world; I was particularly impressed by the high standard and large variety of styles and concepts. Unique is the influence of muslim and local culturemixed with influences from western culture which is getting more exposure and is more accessible in Asia through media and the internet. The comme-de-garcon meets Bernhard Wilhelm designs of Ryzqia stood out to me as being orginal and brave, using a short, pudgy model to accentuate the playfulness was clever and caused a reaction from the audience. The posted pics are just a selection my personal highlights the fantastic show, which took place in the national museum which I will visit tomorrow to learn more about this amazing country.

Congratuations to Anna who won two prizes that night: best women's wear and the Swarowski Crystalized award! Fantastic! Speaking to her later showed again how difficult it is here in Indonesia to source sustainable fabric, so that she compromised to use natural fibres for her collection rather than organic ones; hopefully in the future we can collaborate to make sourcing of sustainable materials easier. She expressed her concern about the lack of concern for environmental issues but believes once the trendsetters in Indonesia can be convinced of eco fashion, others will follow.

Thanks to Anna and her family for taking me under their wing for the night- very kind of the Schmidts! I am looking forward to see what up-and-coming eco-designer Anna Schmidt will get up to after graduating... we will see, maybe some Anglindo collabs...

Time to design a batik stamp

Today was a day out with Nana, who I mentioned in my previous post, supplier of organic cotton with natural dyes from Bali. She was kind enough to let me be her passenger for the day on her little blue motorbike and take me around town.

First stop was the batik workshop Hasan. They employ 25 people, been going for 40 years and is set pretty much outdoors in a quiet and green corner of Cikadung Bandung which is inviting. Friendly Yani who runs the shop and designs a lot of the new batik motifs introduced me to the different areas of the workshop where the wax painting (canting) or stamping (cap) of fabric is done; as well as the skilled gentleman who bends strips of copper to create these intricate stamps. Chemical dyes are used here as using natural ones would not pay off for them, Yani explained. On the upside, they do reuse the molten wax. Nana filled me in that I could use the wax batik facilities here and then send my garments to Yogya (central Java) or Bali to have them dyed. In this case I would have to weigh up carbon emissions to the impact of chemical dye stuffs.

Yani experiments with modern motifs too, many for children, like the cute boat motive below... which I wouldn't mind for a dress actually... I can't wait to design my own cap stamp!

Second stop was to a shop I would have never found or come across on my own and probably won't ever find again without my guide for the day, tucked away in some little side street a shop selling 'Kain Tenun'- traditional heavy cotton fabric, woven in central Java. I wasn't allowed to take photos in the shop, so I would describe this fabric as a heavy weave with a soft touch; the patterns are ikat i.e. created by dyed threads rather than the colour added afterwards as it were in prints and batik. This fabric is used mostly for interiors due to its weight but inspired me for totes, plimsolls and outerwear even as the textures and colours were something else!

Last stop was meeting Nana's friend who is an interior designer who works with recycled materials. One of his playful creations are tetris shelves to mix and match made of recycled wood. But my attention was caught by a little artwork made mostly of instant noodles, as it IS true (sadly) that MSG is a common ingredient; you can even buy big 5 kg bags in supermarkets of the chemical, branded "gourmet powder".

Back at the studio after this inspiring day, I am bursting with ideas for my new organic jersey collection already... ready, steady, sketch!