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.