It was a cold and rainy December evening in London when I received an email from the British Council asking me if I would be willing to take part in the project, as you can imagine, it took all of 2 seconds to accept!!
Last year Oscar won the British Councils International fashion entrepreneur award and came to London to accept the award, which is when I first met him. He is a fashion star in Jakarta, check out his beautiful website www.oscarlawalata.net. What is great about Oscar is that he is so enthusiastic about working with the Indonesian textile producers and has enormous respect for the heritage of the fabrics that they produce. I feel very honoured that he chose to spend his prize money on bringing me to Indonesia to work with the weavers
See below a selection of photos that Oscar sent me from the different weavers that we will be working with on the trip, so inspiring......
The lovely Oscar!
Reggy Lawalata, Oscars mother meeting one of the weavers from the Baun region. What a dude, the Sartorialist would love him!
Oscar with the weavers from Bena.
A tie-dyed warp...
The weavers of Sumba showing their collection of ikats, see why I was so happy to work on this project!
Weaver from Kefa laying out the warp
Looks amazing hey?! I will arrive in Jakarta on Sunday evening where I am staying with Oscars mother and on Monday morning we will leave for Nusa Tenggara to meet the first group of weavers. Very excited and a little bit scared, how do you improve on those fabrics?!! Have to finish packing now, see you in Jakarta......
