Ikat Indonesia by Didiet Maulana

Rising Indonesian designer Didiet Maulana once had to drop his dream of becoming a fashion designer because he thought he did not have the ability. “At that time, everyone was busy talking about Indonesia’s culture and natural resources being claimed by other countries, but they did nothing about it. Rather than just sit around and listen to the debate, I decided to do something,” Didiet said.His mission to help promote the richness of the archipelago was materialized as Didiet was trusted to design the outfits of finance ministers and their deputies, as well as for Sri Mulyani Indrawati, World Bank managing director and former Indonesian finance minister, for the 2013 APEC Summit in Bali.

“I feel flattered of course. I had the chance to promote Indonesia’s traditional textiles and my country, too. I want to show the international quality of Indonesian products,” he said.Didiet said that in the outfit package he had attached a short story on how tenun was made so they could appreciate the textile more and understand all the efforts that had gone into producing it.“I think the stories of products that are part of Indonesia’s culture must be told, because that’s our strength. Behind the fabric, there are people working on it,” he said.The process of getting involved in APEC itself was quite challenging for him.

As the meeting was taking place in Bali, Didiet wanted to use local tenun, and thankfully, he already had the textile in stock. It took about two months to make one piece of tenun ikat. His first meeting with tenun was when he went to Jepara and found a tenun-making village in the city, Troso. Seeing the opportunity to further develop the tenun area, he then asked local weavers to team up with him as soon as he established Ikat Indonesia. He also keeps himself busy by figuring out ways of redeveloping tenun villages by involving more young people in the industry.

“I think the most important thing is my commitment as a designer, followed by the ability to read the trends and the use of logic, which I learned from architecture. Fashion design is a fantasy world, but you have to balance the fantasy with logic,” Didiet said.He said architecture and fashion design were closely related, because in architecture, an architect who drew the designs had to know how to build the design, taking into account technical and mathematical aspects.

Source: http://www.theikatindonesia.com