Local man devoted to making mannequins things of beauty

By Singgir Kartana

YOGYAKARTA (JP): When he was a teenager, Brata Halim loved to spend his spare time making beautiful dolls.

He never expected that his hobby would bring him success.

Today at the age of 56, the father of four is the only maker of store mannequins in the city whose products can now be found all over the world.

The idea to make the mannequins came after he visited a boutique in Jakarta and wondered why the shop had to import its mannequins.

"That's what motivated me to produce mannequins," said Halim in his showroom at Pajeksan village, not far from the legendary boulevard of Malioboro.

Halim started his business in 1969 by using simple materials, a mixture of wax and plastic. He found out later that the materials' weakness caused the fragility of the mannequins.

In 1975, he tried fiberglass, which has proven a better material.

"It's more expensive, but it makes a better quality," said Halim, who claims to be the first craftsman in the country producing human-sized mannequins.

It takes about three months to produce his mannequins, with all the work done manually.

"The finishing process, especially painting the eyes and lips, is the most difficult step to do. This part of the job is what determines the beauty of the mannequin."

Beauty, according to Halim, is the main characteristic of his products.

"What I'm showing is indeed the beauty and the precision of the anatomy of the mannequins I make."

His mannequins show the beauty of the female form, and Halim said they were created from his own thoughts about the most beautiful type of women to be found around the world.

"I cannot just adopt the beauty of a woman according to a particular nation. What is considered beautiful in one nation is not automatically representative of universal beauty."

For example, one of his mannequins may combine the beautiful figure of a Caucasian woman with the nose of an attractive Jewish woman, and the lips of a Chinese.

It also makes good business sense. "Otherwise, it would be very difficult for me to market the mannequins abroad," he said.

To create beautiful mannequins, Halim also often adopts the beautiful faces of popular figures such as Madonna, Britney Spears, the late Princess Diana, and others as his reference. He also makes handsome male mannequins as well as busts of noted figures, including actor Sylvester Stallone, boxer Mike Tyson and Mahatma Gandhi. He is currently working on a figure of child star Joshua.

Most of Halim's customers are boutique and fashion shop owners. At first they came mainly from Yogyakarta and Central Java, but buyers from overseas came after he switched to using fiberglass.

Halim started exporting his mannequins in 1983. His first market was India, selling 10 of his mannequins at a price of Rp 200,000 each. Halim now exports about 150 mannequins, at a price of Rp 400,000 each, each month to countries including India, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and the Philippines.

When the economic crisis hit the country in mid-1997, Halim was forced to temporarily stop producing mannequins.

"Other (exporting) craftsmen probably benefited from the crisis due to the skyrocketing value of the U.S. dollar, but that was not the case for me. Most of the raw materials I need are imported. They are sold in dollars."

By 1999, however, he was back to making his mannequins, destined to take pride of place in shops and boutiques both near and far.