Fashion designers: Seeking exposure, knowledge and real critics

Fashion designers: Seeking exposure, knowledge and real critics

Iwan Tirta, Contributor, Jakarta

I have said it before, and I will say it again: Most Indonesian
fashion designers are still cut from the same cloth. By and
large, we are still dressmakers who have yet to learn that
becoming a real designer takes more than just producing a few
pretty dresses.

I was not a great designer of dresses but concentrated on
fabrics from the start, which meant that my designs were
inevitably confined by tradition to classic forms. For others
during the 1950s to 1980s, fashion design was often a way out of
restricted circumstances, to spread their wings personally and
professionally.

Designers during this period, tended to come from particular
ethnic and religious groups, such as Christians, Manadonese,
Ambonese and ethnic Chinese. For the Javanese upper classes, it
was looked down upon as sissy's work for a man.

With the growth of the media, changing tastes and exposure to
international trends, fashion has gained more acceptance as a
profession since the 1980s, and some designers have become
celebrities in their own right. But the bread and butter -- the
hard slog that goes into becoming a full-fledged designer without
simply commandeering the name for oneself-- is still little
recognized.

It would be too easy to simply blame the designers. It's all
our fault, including the media, for not providing them with the
resources to perfect their craft.

To become an accomplished designer, someone needs exposure and
resources. They need to know what it is to choose different
textiles, the different cuts, the technicalities of making
apparel.

But they also have to be knowledgeable about the history of
fashion, who did what and when, the different styles and how they
have contributed to

It's not so easy to simply throw out a statement like, "Oh,
this is inspired by the 1940s" or "This is a piece of Sulawesi
textile". You have to know the intricacies of it all, what the
trends were in the 1940s and what influenced them, or how that
piece of Sulawesi textile came to be.

Fledgling designers need exposure to different aspects of
fashion and also the resources to look back at historical
precedents. Unfortunately, those resources -- the archives -- are
very limited here, but that does not mean they are nonexistent.
It takes going to the library of a publication like Femina
women's weekly and looking up the trend from, say, 1979 or 1983
or 1990 to discover more.

A designer does not have to do it himself. He or she can
delegate the job to an assistant who can return and inform.

Exposure means getting a hands-on education, learning under
another designer. That does not mean taking a course for six
months or a year which, while providing their own benefits in
learning the basics of fashion, cannot substitute for the
practical experience of an apprenticeship. Yves Saint Laurent,
Givency and many other famous designers learned their craft by
sewing on buttons as an apprentices, an experience they could
bring to their later development as one of the world's great
designers.

The media also shares some of the responsibility. We do not
have a tradition of criticism, period, in this country. It's very
hard for people to criticize, with all the potential for bruised
egos and conflict.

And we do not have a fashion critic in the mold of say Suzy
Menkes from the International Herald Tribune, who wields such
power with her pen. What we have are fashion writers -- people
who write about fashion, compile the facts but rarely are bold
enough, or have the necessary knowledge, to be able to put the
fashion in context.

Once again, that is a problem of the available archival
resources. People have been talking about young designers using
faded batik in the past couple of years; nobody remembers that it
was actually done way back in the early 1980s. The spectacular
performance shows to present collections, now the trend, were
also done 20 years ago.

There are a couple of exceptions. Years ago, when Dini Djalal
was still writing for this publication, she reviewed one of my
collections and noted that several of the pieces were obviously
inspired by the artist Georgia O'Keefe. I read it, and thought,
"Show me this girl".

She had the cultural points of reference and knowledge to be
able to recognize what I was trying to do. I also see that with
your current writer, Hera Diani, and that she is willing to take
the risk of alienating some by giving an opinion -- by being an
actual critic.

There are other writers too, who can identify flaws but often
they opt for the easy way out by "balancing" any criticism. A new
designer debuts and shows some promise, and immediately the media
blows them up into the Next Best Thing. Of course, they cannot
live up to the inflated expectations, especially when they do not
have the constructive criticism or resources to enhance their
talent.

It's not about being bitchy or mean for the sake of being
bitchy. It's about telling things the way they are, so that
designers can learn, take the input and develop their craft. If
someone writes, "Iwan Tirta continues his VERY classic ways", I
know it's another, nice way of saying "old-fashioned". As the
French say, "It's the tone that sets the music".

Style questions for Iwan Tirta? Contact him at
sunday@thejakartapost.com