Worldview | Jakarta Fashion Week Reimagines Indonesia’s Textile Heritage

🇮🇩 Jakarta Fashion Week designers reimagine Indonesia’s heritage textiles. One of the largest annual industry events in Southeast Asia, Jakarta Fashion Week was held from Oct. 21 to 27 in the Indonesian capital. From young mavericks to storied veterans, designers presented collections that often blended tradition with innovation. Bold womenswear brands like Studio Jeje, Saya and Aesthetic Pleasure joined boundary-pushing designers Fuguku, Jan Sober and Tanah Le Sae on the runway. Menswear labels such as Bluesville and Othman highlighted both local artisanal crafts and modern tailoring while couture and legacy labels Pamela Usanto, Wiki Wu, Biasa and Votum Heritage by Sebastian Gunawan & Christina Panarese offered more timeless collections. Indonesia’s vast array of traditional textile heritage was also on show, reinterpreted for modern consumers by brands Era Soekamto, FBudi, and Oscar Lawalata Culture. Batiks were given a modern edge by Denny Wirawan and Adrian Gan who explored batik kudus and batik lasem respectively. Jakarta Fashion Week chair and GCM Group CEO Svida Alisjahbana described the event as “a catalyst for Indonesia’s fashion evolution, nurturing talent and positioning Jakarta as a contender on the global stage [for 17 years].” [BoF Inbox]

🇵🇪 Peruvian trade shows focus on elevating alpaca sustainability standards. The 26th edition of Peru Moda Deco and the 8th edition of Alpaca Fiesta, Peru’s largest fashion and textile trade shows, ran jointly from Oct. 21 to 26 in Arequipa, Peru. The fairs welcomed thousands of attendees, connecting every link in the textile and alpaca fibre value chains, from breeders and farmers to brands and buyers, including several major luxury brands. More than 180,000 Peruvian families are estimated to rely on the alpaca fleece industry. Jessica Rodriguez, president of Alpaca Fiesta highlighted the newly introduced Responsible Alpaca Standard (RAS) certification programme for animal rearing practices. The fairs also featured fashion shows of brands specialising in alpaca fabrics including Sol Alpaca, Patapampa, Kuna and Anntarah. [Graciela Martin for BoF]

🇦🇺 Australia’s Myer acquires brands from Premier Investments Limited. The upmarket department store chain with more than 60 locations across the country has secured a deal with the firm owned by Solomon Lew to buy five of PIL’s apparel brands (Just Jeans, Jay Jays, Portmans, Dotti and Jacqui E) under the Just Group unit in a share sale and implementation agreement. The deal will see Myer add 719 stores to its portfolio and Solomon Lew will join the board of Myer as a non-executive director. The Peter Alexander and Smiggle brands will remain under the ownership of Premier Investments. [Australian Financial Review, Ragtrader]

🇨🇭 Swiss fragrance maker Givaudan opens co-creation hub in China. The group has opened L’Appartement 125, calling it a “state-of-the-art” fine fragrance hub designed to foster co-creation between Givaudan’s perfumers and Chinese brands that will also host workshops, training sessions and exhibitions. “A dedicated fine fragrance team, starting with talented perfumer Jasmine Liu, will be permanently established in Shanghai,” said Xavier Renard, the firm’s global head of fine fragrances. [BoF Inbox]

🇨🇳 Douyin founder is China’s richest man amid declining billionaire numbers. The number of US dollar billionaires in the country has fallen by more than a third in the past three years amid China’s economic slowdown, according to Hurun’s latest ‘rich list’. Billionaire numbers hit a peak of 1,185 in 2021 but have fallen 36% to 753 this year exceeding a 10 percent fall in the yuan’s value against the dollar over that period. Among others, the 10 wealthiest people in the country now include e-commerce, s-commerce and physical retail moguls: Zhang Yiming, Pony Ma, Colin Huang, Li Ka-shing and Victor Li, Lee Shau Kee and Jack Ma. [Financial Times]

🇮🇳 Footwear giant Bata India reports 53% Q2 profit increase. The Gurugram-based company manufacturing and retailing namesake Bata and brands Power and North Star has posted 51.97 crore rupees ($6.1 million) in consolidated net profit for the quarter ended Sep. 2024. The India unit is part of Bata Corporation, a Swiss-based multinational group founded in 1894 by Tomas Bata in modern day Czechia, which today counts more than 32,000 employees selling 150 million pairs of shoes annually across 70 countries, manufacturing in 21 factories across 18 countries. [Economic Times, BoF]

🇨🇳 Chinese firm Raza Heritage Holdings-owned Frette appoints CMO. The Italian luxury linens, loungewear and sleepwear brand has tapped former Diesel veteran Cristiano Quieti as its new chief merchandising and marketing officer, the brand’s first executive hire since it was acquired last year by the consortium that includes a private family investment vehicle for Chinese billionaire and Anta Sports chairman Ding Shizhong and Adrienne Ma, the former president of the storied Hong Kong multi-brand retailer Joyce. [WWD]

🇧🇼 Botswanan Debswana’s sales fall 52% amid global diamond downturn. Sales of rough diamonds in the Jan-Sep 2024 period fell to $1.53 billion compared to $3.19 billion in the same period last year for the firm in the African nation, one of the world’s top diamond producing countries by value which gets around 30-40 percent of its revenue from the sector. The Gaborone-based firm, owned equally by Botswana and Anglo American’s De Beers, sells the majority of its output to De Beers, with the rest going to the state-owned Okavango Diamond Company. [Reuters]

🇨🇳 Luxury shoemaker Manolo Blahnik finally enters the China market. The London-based brand is opening a store on Nov. 4 at Shanghai’s Plaza 66 and plans to launch one store each year thereafter in the Chinese mainland. The end of a 22-year legal battle in 2022 opened the way for the brand to trade across the country for the first time since 1999 after a Chinese court ordered the invalidation of an unlawful trademark registration by a local individual. In March, the brand entered a joint venture in the Hong Kong market with Bluebell Group. [Jing Daily, BoF Inbox]

🇸🇦 Kering Generation Award to launch in Saudi Arabia. The French luxury group’s chief sustainability & institutional affairs officer Marie-Claire Daveu has signed an agreement with Saudi Fashion Commission CEO Burak Cakmak to bring the sustainable innovation prize to the kingdom. The award, which was launched in 2017 and featured previously in China and Japan, will feature a ceremony in 2025 in the Saudi capital Riyadh, consisting of jury members Daveu and Miral Youssef, president of Kering Middle East and Africa, among others. [BoF Inbox]

🇨🇳 Digital Luxury Group acquires Chinese market intelligence firm Re-Hub. The Geneva-based luxury digital marketing agency has purchased the Shanghai-based firm for an undisclosed amount. Re-Hub, which now specialises in AI-driven business intelligence solutions for luxury brands, was founded in 2017 by Max Peiro as a cloud-based SaaS platform measuring brand performance and providing e-commerce optimisation, ‘daigou’ grey market tracking, and pre-owned goods monitoring. DLG managing partner Pablo Mauron said that the acquisition would help it “unlock the ‘China data black box.” [BoF Inbox]

🇮🇳 India’s karigars criticise Amazon’s programme for local handicrafts. The India unit of the e-commerce giant launched Amazon Karigar in 2017 targeting the country’s karigars, highly skilled artisans who typically specialise in handicrafts like embroidery, beading and appliqué. But some karigars claim that the programme has still not helped yield many customers because it fails to sufficiently distinguish their crafts from mass products and its marketplace model doesn’t pay up front in contrast to competitors like Itokri. [Rest of World]

🇳🇬 Nigeria’s commercial capital Lagos to ban textile waste from landfills. The Lagos Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) made the announcement during Lagos Fashion Week, saying that the ban would come into effect within three months across the state and city. The municipality has partnered with Dutch sustainability firms Closing the Loop and Harvest Waste Consortium, as well as Ghana’s Jospong Group. [Fibre2Fashion]

🇮🇳 Indian fashion retailer Arvind’s profit declines 25% in Q2. The Bengaluru-based firm, which has a portfolio of owned and licensed international brands including Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger and a denim fabric manufacturing business, said consolidated net profit fell to 62.77 crore rupees ($7.4 million) in quarter ended Sep. 2024, down from 84.19 crore rupees in the corresponding period a year earlier. [Economic Times]

🇨🇳 Chinese multi-brand store Dongliang reopens in Shanghai. The fashion retailer founded by Charles Wang, Tasha Liu and Lang Nan in 2009 and now led only by Wang with locations in Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Aranya, has returned to Shanghai with a new store in the form of an historic villa. The original Shanghai store was rebranded as Labelhood by Liu after the partnership with Wang ended in 2015. [WWD]

🇮🇳 Indian fashion brand Suta posts 33% revenue rise. The traditional wear brand founded in 2016 by siblings Sujata and Taniya Biswas has recorded a rise in operating revenue to 75 crore rupees ($8.9 million) during the financial year ended March 2024. The Mumbai-based firm’s consolidated net profit fell more than half to 73 lakh rupees ($86,000). [Economic Times]

🇱🇧 Lebanese luxury brand Elie Saab appoints head of handbag division. The brand has named Greek Austrian designer Marina Raphael as its artistic and design director of the category, in a move aiming to boost its handbag division. Raphael, a Greek Austrian member of the Swarovski family, will remain creative director of her eponymous accessories label. [Mojeh]

🇮🇳 Indian department store V-Mart Retail narrows losses in Q2. The multi-category value retail chain with over 440 stores in more than 270 cities nationwide posted a net loss of 57.99 crore rupees ($6.8 million) in the quarter ended Sep. 2024, compared to a 86.42 crore rupees loss in the same period last year. Revenue from operations was up 20.3 percent to 660.97 crore rupees ($78.5) in the quarter. [Economic Times].

🇰🇷 Prada taps South Korean actor Byeon Woo-seok as brand ambassador. The Italian luxury brand has partnered with the film and television star known for roles in “Lovely Runner,” “Record of Youth” and “Moonshine” to endorse its products. The former model has over 11 million followers on Instagram. [Teen Vogue]

🇮🇳 India’s Birla Cellulose partners with Circ to scale recycled fibre. The cellulosic fibre division of Aditya Birla Group, one of the country’s largest diversified conglomerates and a major player in the local fashion and textile industry, has inked a deal to purchase up to 5,000 metric tonnes of the US-based textile-to-textile recycling startup’s pulp per year for five years. [Sourcing Journal]