•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   

A huge picture of a woman wearing a tube-style dress is the first thing visitors see when they enter the house/workshop of fashion designer Deden Siswanto in Bandung. The white dress with dusty gold embroidery is accented by dangling jewelry pinned at the center.

The adjacent workshop, what Deden refers to as “his small factory,” is where he creates his custom-made dresses and suits. “I started out in the fashion industry by designing children’s clothes for department stores,” he said.

Although he does not have a clothing brand name to speak of, Deden has been dressing up people professionally for more than a decade. He has regularly taken part in group shows for fashion weeks and for select special occasions.

As a designer, Deden is known for vintage, feminine and romantic creations. The picture of the woman in the tube-style dress, for example, is his take on curvier women.

Some of Deden’s newest creations, specifically designed for a wedding pavilion in Bali, are draped on headless mannequins at his workshop. In addition, there is a tie-dye dress and a silvery floor-sweeping nightgown with foiling details at the waist and a darker hue at the bottom. At the moment, Deden has shops in Bandung, Jakarta and Surabaya, but it is only the Bandung branch that also doubles as a workshop.

Years of experience have taught the designer how to handle compliments, complaints, even a bit of awkwardness when he takes the measurements of his female clients.

“Some people just don’t like it when strangers get into their personal space,” he said. He recalled what he considers as his worst experience with a client. “I had measured the client a couple of times in the past and was pretty sure that my measurements were right, but she kept saying that the dress was not properly fit,” he said.

“In the end, I found out that her breasts were now a different size from when we first measured them.”

The client thew her money down on the table in a huff when he happened to mention this little detail.

Born to a Javanese father and Sundanese mother, Deden said his family was conservative by nature. He said neither his parents nor any of his siblings were particularly fond of art, let alone fashion.

The youngest of five children, Deden showed an interest in sketching early on. “I used to draw singers like Koes Plus on the wall,” he said, referring to the legendary Indonesian group from the 1970s.

Although he was drawn to fashion, he initially did not dare sign up for design competitions because he was not sure what they were all about.

“After I finished school, I found out about a fashion school in Bandung, so I enrolled there,” he said.

His career path has not always been a smooth one. His family, particularly his mother, at first opposed his choice of carreer. “Why do you want to be a tailor?” his mother said to him at the time.

But after he showed his parents that designing clothes could earn him a decent living, they accepted his choice. Deden was a children’s clothes designer at a department store for eight years before he was finally accepted into the Association of Indonesian Fashion Designers (APMI) in 2000.

Soon after, he stopped designing for children and shifted his focus to making custom-made clothes for women. He also helped several senior designers prepare their fashion shows. “I thought I could do it because people came and asked me to make clothes for them,” Deden said.

After launching his first women’s wear collection with other designers in a group show, Deden said he felt like he was finally part of the fashion industry. Over the years, he saw to it that he remained productive by constantly joining group shows. “It shows consistency and continuity as a designer and is also good for promoting [myself],” Deden said.

Three years ago, he started designing men’s wear for the Fashion First store in Senayan. Deden emphasized that being a designer does not necessarily mean just designing beautiful dresses and payet or kebaya , which are traditional tops for Javanese woman.

“I have tried to keep away from all of that because even though it’s good for business, we as fashion designers should have a vision of what kind of style we want to be recognized for,” Deden said.

According to Deden, his trying to be different has not necessarily meant that he has been given due credit for his innovations. Sometimes, he said, people just don’t get his designs when he introduces them.

“When batik was not as widely accepted as a part of modern wear as it is right now, I was already putting some batik elements in my designs, as well as tenun ikat and songket ,” Deden said. “But people only recognized it as a trend because a certain designer used batik during one glamorous show.”

The same thing happened with the use of foiling and laser-cutting techniques, which Deden said he had pioneered in the country. He added that despite its glamorous image, the fashion industry is a tough one to be in. One has to learn how to balance the creative side with the business side. “I believe that there’s art in fashion,” he said.

This emphasis on the creative side is one of the reasons why Deden has yet to form a brand of his own. “I think it’s because I am more of an artist rather than a designer or a businessman,” he said.