Barli Asmara for Batik Jambi

Batik Jambi has been long known as jewel in this land rich of Melayu culture. It's the pride of Jambi, and the pattern and batik technique have been inherited for years, but this local treasure hardly made its way to national market.

Barli Asmara was selected “Duta Jambi 2017.” With his role, Barli has been working on the development of batik Jambi through workshops and socialization. These workshops and socialization aim to develop the patterns and colors of batik and songket from Jambi. After three months of process, Barli finally introduced his collection on batik and songket Jambi at the Plaza Indonesia Fashion Week 2017 (23/3). The collection is named “Kain Negeriku Jambi.”

Sherin Tharia Zola speaking as the Head of Dekranasda Provinsi Jambi said that Barli Asmara has a vision and mission to preserve Indonesian traditional fabric, which is hand in hand with the government of Jambi’s goal to promote batik Jambi. Sherin wants batik Jambi to be able to reach the younger market, and Barli Asmara did what’s needed to do to reach that goal. The mainstream batik Jambi is dominated with bright colors like black and red. Barli made innovation on his collection by putting monochrome colors to the batik. “Coloring is important to pull a younger market,” said Sherin.

Barli admitted that these kinds of colors were very seldom applied by the crafters, and they often don’t know what they can make of the fabric. So, Barli did some modernization by using monochrome colors like black, white, and blue. He even also trained the crafters how to produce pastel-colored batik. “Alhamdulillah, the responses were positive,” said Zumi Zola as the governor of Jambi.

These new colors are combined with Jambi’s traditional patterns, such as batang hari, daun karet, durian pecah, sawit, tampu manggis, rotan, and bunga sepatu. These combinations are later put into various kinds of fabric, including silk, semi-floral silk, viscose, chiffon, and organdy. Barli Asmara turned traditional fabric of Jambi into edgy modern blouses, pants, skirts, blazers, shirts, and dresses.

Regardless, Barli’s support for Jambi and its batik and songket crafters doesn’t stop here. “I have to develop “Kain Negeriku” until the crafters have their success,” said Barli. He wants to focus on the micro, small, and medium enterprises (UMKM) so that they can be empowered and have an important not only local existence but also national or even international.

So, to support his goal, Barli also creates an e-commerce platform that will accommodate the crafters of Jambi’s traditional fabric. The platform will use the system of 20-80 profit sharing where the 80% goes to the crafters. “I want them to be seen and not behind me,” said Barli.

Despite the success of the collection release, Zumi Zola emphasized that they don’t want this event to be only a formality. He said that the main goal is to increase the quality of the human resources in Jambi, and the result can be seen from the creation. 

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