Design Thinking Seminar & Talk Show by HDII (Himpunan Desainer Interior Indonesia) - Photography by Ferry Kana & Gogor Pandu - Location : Indonesia Convention Exhibition BSD City Jakarta

Today, another interesting event came up. I had a solo fashion show in front of Jakarta's young university students, with them as the models as well! And guess what? They looked gorgeous also!!! So I am confident to say that Indische really can be worn by EVERYONE.

I was informed about the fashion show just 10 days before. It was a private show for design students and practitioners who were attending the Design Thinking Seminar & Talk Show held by HDII (the Indonesian Interior Designer Association). The theme of the seminar was about personal branding, reinventing heritage, and it also happened to be Indonesia's National Batik Day. Luckily, it only took a couple of days to collect 13 girls and 2 boys from Interior Design & Architecture students from various universities in Jakarta (Universitas Indonesia, Trisakti, Mercubuana, and Binus). And oh my.... the girls were sooo pretty.... Brains and beauty at its best!

Behind The Scene

To make sure this fashion show would run smoothly, I asked my multi-talented friend Grace Indira Patty to help me out with the choreography, music arrangement and additional make-up. I have known her for over 25 years and I've wanted to collaborate with her for so long. At last the opportunity has come! It was such a blessing to experience working together with her even for just 2 days. For sure more will happen in the future.

The preparation of the clothes and the show was really easy... But for days I was very nervous because for the first time, I was going to do the make up myself. Yes, crazy as it sounds, I wanted to be in control of it because too many times I have seen fashion shows done by make up artists, which ended up too thick, too old, or simply too much. With the assistance of Grace, and one of my favorite models Annisa Zani who does better eye brows than me, the three of us succeeded in keeping the girls looking smart, fresh and young.

Talking to these girls while putting on their make up gave me such a positive feeling about what I thought was an unpromising young generation. Particularly some.... who are smart, ambitious, and beautiful at the same time, they have so much opportunities and challenges ahead.

And my message to them : at your age, you can do anything. Learn everything. Then find your passion. Once you find your passion, love it and work hard for it, and life will be good.