Batik: Indonesia’s Latest Trend is Coming Home
Batik, the Indonesia’s original attire is becoming the latest girlie fashion trend these days in big cities of Indonesia such as Jakarta, and Bandung. Batik is dominating the display of girls’ clothing stores, and it comes in various patterns and designs.
This phenomenon is quite surprising since batik is usually regarded as old fashioned, and only worn by Javanese. There used to be only 2 types of batik: first type which is worn only at home (as the substitution of pajamas), and the other one is batik for attending formal wedding party. No grey area that people could wear batik to the mall.
However, it seems changed. Now, people, especially females see it differently; there are countless reasons to wear batik. On the top the list is, of course, because it comes as really cute stuff like mini dress, tunic, and skirt. And the followings are the fact that it is very comfortable to wear, and the price that is so affordable (the price range is from IDR.20000–IDR.70000). The combination of cute design, comfort and reasonable price has made batik wearable yet casually trendy.
A retailer said that the trend was initially started to celebrate Kartini’s day (21st of April) this year, and he got the supply from cities those are known for their batik like Yogyakarta, and Pekalongan.
Besides, batik trend actually doesn’t only go local, but also international. It’s on the list of stuff of ‘Xenophile’ look, together with other countries’ ethnic prints, and African safari look such as zebra stripes bangles. Xenophile is defined as “a person who is attracted to foreign cultures” (in other name: Global Chic Mix look) and became the X on TeenVogue’s ‘Spring Forward; All The Trends from A to Z’.
This is good news for Indonesia. Batik should be preserved, and the ‘I-Love-Batik’ campaign seems to be successful. We’ll see whether this is going to be an everlasting love or only temporary. But for now, Indonesia’s latest trend is coming home.

Add a comment 2 comments for this entry.
Budi Putra
Nice post, Puti. I like to see others wearing batik, but I am not so convenient wearing it :-)
May 14th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
syu ming
hi.. puti,it is nice to read this batik trend. long live for batik. Let’s save our culture, before admited by our neighbour again.. (^_^)
June 15th, 2008 at 5:14 pm