Batik
with an Italian touch
Ade Rizal
Contributor,
Surakarta, Central Java | March 28 2014 | 12:45 PM
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Personal
touch:
Italian young designer Giorgia Donia learns to make
batik in Laweyan batik village, Surakarta, Central Java.
One
of Italy’s oldest fashion schools, Koefia, has not only included batik fashion
in its curriculum, but has also paraded its stylish designs on the catwalk.
Two
young designers and the school’s graduates, Giuseppe Perri and Giorgia Donia,
claimed they are captivated by the beauty of batik and its motifs as well as
amazed by the rich philosophical meaning behind the fabric’s intricate patterns.
Perri believes batik has a big chance of setting world fashion trends, with its
rich patterns as its main strength to draw global interest.
“The
more distinctive the motifs being offered, the easier for batik to find its
foreign market,” he said. He said designers who exploit batik
for their fashion creations should not be at pains to make batik appeal to the
global community. “They just have to preserve the identity of batik as a genuine part
of Indonesian culture and the world will be very fond of batik,” Perri says.
Up
close: Designers from the International Fashion Academy Koefia watch the
batik-making process in Surakarta, Central Java.
The
International Fashion Academy Koefia, which is located in Rome, has included
batik in its curriculum as part of a cooperation program with the Indonesian
Embassy in Italy to enrich its batik design to breach the international market.
Since
the cooperation began three years ago, the fashion school students have been
assigned to create designs using batik fabrics brought from Indonesia,
especially from Surakarta and Pekalongan in Central Java.
Some
200 designs have been created — each given the renowned Italian fashion touch.
Following the selection process, 40 of them have been made into fashion pieces
that have been displayed at different fashion shows in Italy.
Yenny
Lioniwati, a representative of the Indonesian Embassy in Italy, said the cooperation
would hopefully further promote batik to the world.
She
said the school had an impressive learning method where the students were
taught to apply haute couture techniques and dressmaking skills, which in a
way, resembled the meticulous batik-making process.
The
weakness of batik designers, as noticed by their Italian counterparts, lies in
the lack attention to detail, she added. “We need to learn from the European
fashion designers,” she says.
Perri’s
batik wear designs have even won a fashion design contest.
For
his pieces, he transformed batik cloths with motifs of Punakawan, the four
comical characters in Javanese shadow puppet play, into stylish pieces.
Italian
design: Designer Giuseppe Perri shows off his award-winning batik designs.
Perri
said that in the beginning, he saw batik as just another fabric. But after
learning about the batik-making process and the rich philosophical meaning
behind its motifs, he could not hide his admiration.
“After
delving deeper into batik, I learnt the meaning behind every motif,” he says.
It
was in the hope of further understanding batik that the two designers recently
came to Indonesia to observe the batik-making process up close.
“In
my opinion, batik is not just any textile. It has a deep philosophy inherent in
its motifs. By grasping the meaning behind a pattern, I hope I can make designs
as profound with its motif,” said Donia when visiting batik production centers
in Surakarta and Pekalongan.
Unless
a designer takes into account the profound philosophy behind batik when
creating a design, she said the created piece would be no different from
regular clothing.
In
a move to make batik popular among young people, she said batik motifs should
be applied to popular materials like glossy leather to give a modern touch.
In
Surakarta, the designers visited Laweyan batik village where they watched how
to produce handmade batik and printed batik.
They
also tried applying wax from canting onto cotton cloth.
After
working on some motifs, Perri said he had visualized his own batik motifs.
“It’s traditional Javanese patterns with Italian-style strokes,” he says.
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