Continuing our support of Jakarta Fashion Week, we were pleased to support the participation of Teatum Jones in this year’s event.

Our contribution to this year’s Jakarta Fashion Week was done in collaboration with the Festival Bebas Batas, Indonesia’s first arts and disability festival. UK designers Teatum Jones are known for their fashion collections which begin from the point of human stories. Their creative process is centred around in depth conversations and research to involve people in their pro-social and inclusive designs.

Teatum Jones’ Spring/Summer 2018 collection, the Body | Part 2, was part of a 12 month examination of our relationship with the human body. The collection was a creative homage to Natasha Baker, the ‘Horse Whisperer.’ Natasha is a GB Paralympic dressage 11 time gold medallist who has from Transverse Myelitis. The showcase of the collection included models with disabilities, plus-sized models and models from differing ethnic backgrounds – promoting a greater step towards diversity in mainstream fashion weeks.

Building on this work, we were able to bring Teatum Jones together with Indonesian designers Sean Sheila to explore issues of inclusion at Jakarta Fashion Week. Sean and Sheila work with a local disability social enterprise to produce their collections and are also concerned with enhancing inclusion and representation within mainstream fashion. Together, both design duos want to encourage a more human-centric fashion industry.

Working with Festival Bebas Batas an open casting was hosted at the National Museum of Indonesia, giving disabled models the opportunity to participate in an onsite photo shoot and in the Jakarta Fashion Week catwalk. 5 models were chosen and young designers and students were invited to an open studio to see the live collaboration with photographer Hilarius Jason.

For the Teatum Jones x Sean and Sheila show at Jakarta Fashion Week, disabled and non-disabled models took to the catwalk in the first ever show in Jakarta featuring disabled models. The designers urged visitors to consider why modelling and fashion shouldn’t be more representative of the diverse world we live in. 

The programme formed part of the UK/ID Festival 2018 – Breaking Boundaries.

About UK/ID Festival 2018

Where creative people from opposite sides of the globe collaborate; where music and art and technology fuse; where there are no limits to people’s creativity, regardless of disability.

UK/ID Festival 2018 is a place where we can celebrate diversities of ecology and neurology, of virtual reality and sexuality; where rhythms meet future roots, and Frogmen meet Fish Police.