Local designers and media start exploring the benefits of cyberworld

Local designers and media start exploring the benefits of cyberworld

By Agni Amorita

JAKARTA (JP): Daisy Windayanti, the fashion editor of Kawanku,
a magazine for young girls, almost kissed her computer after she
found the latest picture of Indonesian model Tracy Trinita on a
catwalk in a Paris fashion show.

"I am so happy because I found not only one but almost a dozen
photos of her," she said. Daisy was just finishing an article on
17-year-old Tracy.

Tracy is the only Indonesian model who is working in
international leading fashion spots like Paris, Milan and New
York. She has also been chosen to be one of the three models
representing Iman Cosmetics, owned by David Bowie's wife, Iman
Abdulmadjid. But it is not that easy to find a picture of her on
the catwalk because she is a newcomer. "As a photomodel, her
pictures are easily found in magazines or adverts. We can just
buy the magazine and take the photos," explained Daisy. That
explains why she was so excited upon finding what she wanted on
the Internet.

Daisy chose one of Tracy's best photo, scanned it and printed
it in her magazine. Aware that such action could be considered
illegal, Daisy wrote "repro from (the website's name)" in the
caption. "No doubt, the Internet is a real help for my job," she
said.

For years, fashion on the Internet in Indonesia has been
dominated by media professionals, like journalists, and
designers. Last month an Indonesian model website,
www.modelatnet.com, was launched.

Ratih Sanggarwati, whose Expose modeling agency is represented
on the website, believes in the importance of this breakthrough.
"And we can already see the results, there has been a huge
response from related fields, like garment companies that have
asked me about it, let alone the increasing number of visitors to
the website," she said earlier this month.

"People I meet keep asking about the website, almost
everyday," she said. "The website has only been available for a
week and I have already got many suggestions, like the need to
improve the pictures of my models; there have been complaints
that some models are not featured in their latest photographs.
So, I believe this thing can really work here."

Kompas daily newspaper offers another Indonesian fashion site.
"We have just completed it. It uses special tools like a disc
camera to directly transfer all reports to our website,"
explained Wicky Winarno, fashion writer for Kompas online. Her
website -- www.kompas.com/lifestyle/fashion.htm -- reports major
fashion events in the country, including on-location reports that
enable surfers to get the latest news ahead of the traditional
newspaper readers.

The Internet has helped local designers. "With the help of
Internet, I cannot only peek at the latest creations of the world
best couturiers but also know about the hottest costumes worn by
international celebrities around the world," said designer Kanaya
Tabitha, whose main customers are local celebrities who have a
strong desire to connect their styles with their colleagues in,
say, Hollywood.

The Internet is also used by specialist designers. Chennie Han
runs a bridal house and designs international wedding dresses.
"Bridal gowns are not something we easily see in every edition of
popular fashion magazines. To stay in touch with bridal gown
trends, I have to subscribe to bridal magazines from European
countries, which sometimes comes a little late due to delivery
problems," explained Chennie, one of the first local designers to
subscribe to an Internet service provider. "By using the
Internet, this problem is easily solved. For example, after
typing one word, say, fashion, into any search engine like
altavista or yahoo!, I will have thousand websites waiting to be
clicked," she said.

Chennie is right. By entering the keyword fashion in yahoo!'s
search engine 3,000 sites with over 100 categories appear. In the
news category we can read various stories, ranging from the death
of Frances's leading couturier, Louis Feraud, who reached his
fame after designing a white dress for Brigitte Bardot in the
1950's (he died on Dec. 28, 1999 in the age of 79), to a trivia
report about American designer Anna Sui's apartment in New York.
Later, we can surf various websites (one of them is House of
Zob's, which offers the best photo collections of Christi
Turlington) or many compilations of magazine articles like A
conversation with Holly Brubach taken from Salon magazine, on
Nov. 11, 1999, or video categories which provides access to
Hollywood supermodels. There are also live net events and
profiles of famous fashion icons from Claudia Schiffer to Fabio.
But the most important site for Indonesian fashion writers must
be Suzy Menkes' column in the International Herald Tribune.
Almost all Indonesian fashion editors follow her weekly column
either by the paper or via the online edition. That is why there
was real joy among them when Suzy wrote, using superlative words,
about local designer Biyan Wanaatmadja and his national
collection for the Asia Fashion Connection Show in Singapore,
1997.

Unfortunately, there have still been no efforts from local
designers to introduce their fashion collections to international
markets via the Internet. Although e-commerce is knocking on
Indonesia's door, the fashion industry still only use it as
consumers, not producers.