Jakarta - For many urban Indonesians, traditional batik clothes are just too "kampungan" or "un-trendy". Not for Jakarta-based designer Josephine Komara, who goes by the name Obin.
She has made batik fashionable again, using modern colours and patterns on traditional sarongs, scarves, and fitted blouses, and sells her textiles at outlets in Japan, the United States, and Singapore, as well as in Indonesia.
"I fell in love with the cloth," said Obin, 52, whose fabrics often take months or even a year to finish. The end result can cost as much as several hundred dollars.
Obin`s obsession with fabric dates from the 1970s when she began collecting antique textiles, only to find that Indonesia`s heritage of weaving and dyeing had been almost forgotten as the country turned to mass production of machine-made textiles.
"What we`re doing is a national heritage," said Obin in an interview, although "I never did it to preserve it."
Batik, the painstaking art of decorating cloth using both wax and dye, is an ancient tradition which derives its name from the Javanese word titik, meaning dot.
Over the years, batik became more of a ceremonial dress, worn only on special occasions such as weddings and prayer ceremonies, and largely shunned by the younger generation and urban sophisticates.
But Obin, an Indonesian-Chinese who dropped out of school at the age of 12, was inspired by her collection of batik and other textiles, and decided to experiment by applying batik to hand-woven fabric and silk, instead of to cheap cotton.
"Traditionally it was made on mill-made cotton. The two worlds had never fused. I fused the two worlds," said Obin.
Her showroom, in a Dutch colonial-era house in Jakarta`s leafy Menteng suburb, displays her textiles as works of art.
Obin has more than 2,500 artisans, from spinners to weavers to dyers working on her textiles, producing an average of 20,000 metres of silk a month, according to her Web site.
"This is not just an art. It`s also a business, it`s an investment."
With designers such as Obin reviving the tradition, many Indonesians are draping themselves in sarongs and shirts in a host of designs from the earth-tone motifs of the royal city of Solo to the brightly coloured Chinese-influenced bird and fish motifs of Pekalongan.
Source: in.reuters.com (16 April 2008)
