“I think the benefits of residency programs are enormous for artists. On a very basic level, it gives an artist time to work and space to work, away from their normal lives. I think that all of these factors create an environment where artists can make substantial jumps in their work in a short amount of time.” – Shara Hughes, The Importance of Artist Residencies.
Fashion Futures
Committed to create and support a sustainable Indonesian fashion ecosystem, our aim is to foster mutual learning between Indonesia and the UK through Fashion Future Residencies. The Residencies will also serve as a platform to bring together fashion industries and raise awareness about fashion futures and spark discussion regarding this topic. We believe that when two creative forces collide together and engage in a mutual learning process, we can witness another remarkable and groundbreaking artistic works in fashion.
The Residencies
In August 2016, two young fashion designers from UK, Billie Jacobina and Rosella May will start their fashion adventure in Indonesia to do a three-month residency. University of Creative Arts graduate Billie Jacobina will spend time in Baduy (West Java) and work closely with Indonesian designer, LEKAT. While Rosella, who studied Fashion Knitwear and Knitted Textiles at Nottingham Trent, will collaborate with designer SOE Jakarta and spend time in Pekalongan. Both designers will then return to Jakarta to co-develop a capsule collection with their respective partner designer for Jakarta Fashion Week.
Billie and Rosella are both winners of the Graduate Fashion Week International Residency, a programme that seeks to internationalise the Graduate Fashion Week schedule and celebrates the importance of emerging talent in the fashion industry in the UK. The residency location changes each year, and this year it is linked to the British Council’s Indonesian Fashion Forward Programme, which launched in 2012. The programme is a partnership with Jakarta Fashion Week, which includes the hugely successful designer mentorship programme run by the Centre for Fashion Enterprise.
The creative collaboration between the Indonesian and UK fashion designers will be showcased at Jakarta Fashion Week from 22 – 28 October 2016.
Who are the designers from the UK?
Rosella May
Rosella is a unisex designer who studied Fashion Knitwear and Knitted Textiles at Nottingham Trent, will collaborate with designer SOE Jakarta. May’s final collection was selected to represent Nottingham Trent at Graduate Fashion Week; and comprised six androgynous knitted denim outfits which incorporated male styles of the 1950s alongside contemporary fashion shapes. The collection aimed to raise awareness of how denim can be produced in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way, while still maintaining the fabric’s characteristic properties.
Instagram: @rosellamay123
Billie Jacobina Cox
University of Creative Arts graduate Billie Jacobina will work closely with designer LEKAT. A Textiles Print designer whose work focuses on print designing for both fashion and the accessories market, Billie’s current body of work, ‘C-LYF’, draws inspiration from international travel to contrasting influences of Moroccan patterns and architecture with a mystical underwater world. Following collaborations with shoe-makers and a silversmith, her designs often incorporate, fur, and foil printing.
Instagram: @billiejacobinacox
Who are the designers from Indonesia?
LEKAT
LEKAT likes to move across time - as an expression of the belief that design should look both pre-modern and post-modern, high-tech through surprises in shapes and colours of the future and patterns of the past, and Amanda Indah Lestari has committed to what she confirmed. As the Creative Director of LEKAT, she landmarks every collection as an invention that triumph skills and stories. Embodying the meaning of LEKAT in Bahasa Indonesia: lastingly memorable, she has been creating, inventing and innovating with her distinctive fashion style which draws upon the various aspects of Indonesia's rich and diverse culture.
Instagram: @lekatdihati
SOE Jakarta
SOE Jakarta is born out of a love affair with hand woven textile and an ode to classic timeless style. Monique Soeriaatmadja’s vexation of not being able to find the perfect fabric when creating her designs led her to search for Indonesian textile artisans with the same thirst for innovation and the same curiosity and hunger for unique creations. Most of the pieces in her debut collection are cut using fabrics developed after hours of discussion with weavers from different parts of the country who create beautiful fabrics on traditional looms, including the labour intensive back-strap loom. Her creations are inspired by those patterns and textures and her fascination with sportswear and contemporary arts.
Instagram: @soe_jakarta
The Indonesia Fashion Forward network
Last year we witnessed a successful fashion collaboration between one of Indonesia’s most prominent young designers, Dian Pelangi, with UK based young designers from London College of Fashion, Odette Steele and Nelly Rose Stewart. The three designers spent time away from home last year to immerse themselves in the vibrant local fashion culture of both Indonesia and the UK. The result is a unique showcase of modest fashion in the way that the fashion world had never seen before.
Building on the Indonesia Fashion Forward network and the previous Dian Pelangi x London College of Fashion residency, the Fashion Futures Residencies are a series of residencies, with the aim to develop artistic and creative collaboration between UK based graduate students from the Graduate Fashion Week network and designers from the Indonesia Fashion Forward network.
