Fashion Forward Marks A New Height for Jakarta Fashion Week

In terms of building the capacity of the local design talent, the Jakarta Fashion Week (JFW) has reached a new, significant height this year as indicated by its Fashion Forward Program – a real effort to catapult Indonesian designers into the global arena.

From a process originated last year, the organizer of JFW received the full personal support of Minister Marie Pangestu of the Tourism and Creative Economy ministry to develop the capacity of Indonesia’s fashion design talents, with a focus to turn many of its mostly small design labels into sustainable and globally competitive businesses. With this objective in mind, the JFW organizer, assisted by its long-time partner the British Council, began a relationship with experts grouped in Centre for Fashion Enterprise (CFE), a prominent London-based fashion consultancy, training and incubation group. In a relatively short time, a partnership was formed. The name of the mission or program is called Fashion Forward.

The CFE experts who participated in the Fashion Forward initiative included Toby Meadows, author of the book “How to Set Up and Run a Fashion Label”, and fashion branding expert Sanjeev Davidson, a veteran of menswear label Hackett among others. At the later stage, CFE Director Wendy Mallem and legendary buyer Angela Quaintrell, formerly of the Liberty department store were also involved.

The task for both JFW and CFE is to select a number of local labels from a wide range of market segments and categories to be enrolled into a grueling development program conducted by CFE experts. The British experts first arrived in March this year to conduct an intensive market-entry workshop for the designers pre-selected by the JFW creative team. At that early stage, 10 names were selected.

A second session, called the ‘Fashion Pioneer’ phase, took place in May. By this month, there were 8 labels left. These included: Cotton Ink (Carline Darjanto and Ria Sarwono),Major Minor (Ari Seputra, Sari Seputra, Inneke Margarethe, and Ambar Pratiwi),Bretzel (Imelda Kartini and Yuliana), AlbertYanuar, Yosafat Dwi Kurniawan, Barli Asmara,Jeffry Tan and Dian Pelangi. At this stage, the designers were tasked to present their creations as if they were participating in a trade show.

The culmination of the process would take place during JFW 2013 as the eight designers will show their collections on the runaway on Friday November 9th before the local and international media as well as fashion buyers. Most crucially, they will also set up presentations for a number of international buyers who are scheduled to attend JFW 2013 in a special venue called The Buyers’ Room.