Further Research: Batik Amarillis's Quirky play of pattern

November 27, 2024

Further Research: Batik Amarillis's Quirky play of pattern

In this research post, I will be discussing the batik collection of batik Amarillis that caught my attention of the unique play of pattern. I choose to examine batik Amarillis because the media used (Batik) is related to my project and I wanted to further explore different ways on how Batik is styled. Batik Amarillis have its own uniqueness and characteristic that are shown through the 'quirky' play of pattern in their collection. Batik Amarillis is a handmade clothing business founded in 2010 by Selly Hasbullah as the creative director where its concept inclines towards love and passion for Indonesia's traditional fabrics. Every piece of their collection are individually made by local craftsmanship using hand-painted batik source locally. "Our sweet and quirky design reflects romantic vintage, whimsical and ethnic spirits, all's made with love and passion" (Batik Amarillis, 2013)

Observing one of the outer collection on the image below, Batik Amarillis have a unique design on the outer with the half circles sewed around the edge. It's certainly a distinctive design however I believe that garment should be designed not only to look beautiful on the person but also give comfortability to the one wearing it. I think that the arm decorative design is unnecessary and could cause discomfort and disturb activities. A unique design of a garment would be better as a runway collection to showcase and introduce the brand identity but it would not be a good for a ready-to-wear clothing.

Batik Amarillis aim to turn batik to reflect a vintage and whimsical look, and it's shown on the simple and straightforward design of the clothing on the pictures underneath. However I don't quite agree that it successfully deliver the vintage-look because the pacthwork button up shirt and hoodie proposed more of an outdated style and rather childish and eccentric. Batik have a wide variety of colour and pattern, not only the classic brown colored batik. There are more types of Batik who share the similar look but more variety of pattern such as batik wonogiri, parang rusk and several floral patterned batik. I think the colour choices should differ and have bigger variety because colour like dark purple, marron and dusty navy would also work well to show a vintage-look collection.

Now, looking at the way the Batik top is styled is also contrast to what I wanted to do for my project. In the pictures below, Batik Amarillis style the piece into a old retro look by the use of bucket hat and old classic hat (second image) paired with dark wash denim, and high top air Jordan sneaker which I personally think is rather an unusual way of styling a vintage look because the colorful sneaker and the bucket hat obviously portray contemporary look which makes the collection are drawn off from the initial concept.

Looking from the range of pattern used in the collection, I noticed that Batik Amarillis use Hungarian folk embroidery significantly on their design. I think it's lovely pattern on its own, however if it's paired with batik, I don't quite see the similarities and ways it could be paired except it have quite a similar embroidery design to kebaya encim (third image). The Hungarian embroidery does portray the vintage and boho style Batik Amarillis aimed, but as stated on the business vision and concept, they focus on giving batik a new look. I think that the embroidery over powered the main subject which is batik and less showcase the originality of batik. And because Batik Amarillis use the embroidery on most of the design, I think they should include this on the business 'about us' description on the range of pattern and style they used.