Dayak Meets West

My final piece is a mini fashion collection. I designed, made, styled and shot two outfits and coordinating accessories. The idea behind the work was inspired by my own experience and knowledge of a tribe in my home country, Indonesia, as well as those in England, where I have lived for the last four years. There are a variety of tribes in Indonesia with diverse styles of traditional clothing. In this project, I refer to the Dayak tribe based in Borneo. Holly Fulton’s collection, that I came across at London Fashion Weekend in February 2016, reminded me of their designs. My final piece promotes the beautiful culture and unique tradition of the Dayak tribe that has not yet been explored commercially.

As my starting point I used the traditional clothing of the Dayak tribe, which I combined with traditional women’s Victorian dress. In a previous project I made a DIY crinoline, which I used again in order to create the ‘fluffiness’ of the Victorian silhouette. I think the combination of these two different approaches gave birth to a futuristic hybrid.

I particularly enjoyed creating the Dayak-like motif using bleach on the skirt’s fabric to make an instant colour and pattern. I experimented with three different fabrics and I found that jersey fabric worked best with bleach. I also used selactasine puff binder over the top of the motif to create texture on the fabric. This method is similar to the original fabric, which is not flat due to the creation of motif using beads in variety colours.

Another dress that I made was designed more as ‘ready to wear’. I’m interested in the use of pom-poms in one of the Dayak people’s traditional dresses, and the way in which this correlates with recent trends. The coordinating necklace was also inspired by Dayak dress, which in this case is like a cape covered with embroidered motifs.

I gained all of the information about the Dayak tribe online, as well as through my father, who is working in Kalimantan Island, where the Dayak people live. He knows a lot about it as he is surrounded by the aboriginal people in his neighborhood. I wish I could do primary research for this project, and thus create my work based purely on my own experience, however I still think my research has been pretty extensive.

I thrive on referring back to my cultural heritage, and consequently I would like to further explore my roots on the future course, as well as continuing to work with all aspects of fashion, marketing and styling.

#Foundationwork #Fashion #Dayak #DIY