Indonesian Designer Rises Like Phoenix on Paris Catwalks

PARIS (Agence France-Presse)—As a teenager, Indonesian designer Farah Angsana spent hours happily creating dresses for her sister and mother. This week she was showing off her sophisticated, sexy gowns in Paris, the hallowed home of haute couture.

The 34-year-old has come a long way from Medan, the capital city of North Sumatra, where she was born. And the journey has not always been easy.

On Jan. 23, she was one of only two newcomers invited to take part in the packed unofficial "off" calendar organised alongside Paris haute couture week, with a collection she styled as her "come-back" onto the international scene.

"I have always loved fashion. Fashion is my passion, but it is not my life. I used to think when I was young that fashion was my life. Then I started to realise it's only my work," she said, reflecting on her reasons for an absence of two-and-a-half years.

Her new women's haute couture collection of glamorous, sensual evening wear was inspired by the story of the Japanese geisha, currently very "a la mode" with the launch of US director Steven Spielberg's film of Memoirs of a Geisha.

But it was also drawn from the myth of the phoenix, the golden bird constantly reborn out of fire, and which for Angsana has become a metaphor of her life.

"It's a collection inspired basically by myself as a person. I have been reborn," she said.

"I'm coming back. I've done this and I've done that, and I'm now coming back. I'm just like a bird flying here and flying there. But I don't want to be just a bird, so I decided to be a phoenix."

Angsana, a graduate of the London College of Fashion, has journeyed far, having been educated in the US and London, and gathered many cultural perspectives. But she has also run up against hurdles.

She knows better than most how hard it is to break into the rarefied world of haute couture, a tightly controlled discipline of making outfits to a rigid protocol.

Hand-stitched, and hand fitted to clients, each outfit can take several weeks to complete and sell for huge sums.

It's a small club of designers of the likes of Karl Lagerfeld and John Galliano whose outfits clothe the rich and famous, and have earned them hero status and a cult following from fashionistas the world over.

But for young designers trying to get a step up onto the podiums, it can be a tough battle overcoming such snobbery. Something Angsana knows to her cost.

She arrived in Paris from London and rented a studio with other young designers. But despite three successful men's ready-to-wear collections, she still felt an outsider. In one particularly bruising comment, a critic likened her collection to a "Christmas Tree."

"In 1999 fashion was so much into minimalism. Grey, black and white, grey, black and white. It was so dull. It was so sad, so depressing, so dark ... then my collection was so couture, so Valentino, so Ungaro, so colorful, so flowery so cheerful," she said.

She stuck it out for a while, then almost three years ago she pulled up sticks and headed back to Zurich and the home she shares with her Swiss financier husband of eight years.

"I had a tremendously bad time. When I got out of Paris, there was only one thing I took, that was my dignity and my knowledge," she said regretfully.

She kept her Zurich-based business going for her faithful clientele mainly from Saudi Arabia, the US and Indonesian-Chinese living in Singapore.

But after a period of reflection, and with more than a little trepidation, she agreed to return with her new collection once she felt emotionally ready.

Angsana spent eight months fashioning this collection, drawing on her mixed Indonesian-Chinese heritage, and making research trips to China and Japan.

The result is stunning in its simplicity. Flowing bright dresses in chiffons and velour and even chainmail, hug the body imparting a sinuous, sexy line. And then the eye is irresistibly drawn to the details: sprinkles of sparkling gemstones, lace and tassles, beads woven into the shape of Japanese fans on a bodice.

"I like the seam to be perfect. I like the mix of fabrics. If you look at my collection it's a very simple cut, but a lot of details in it," said Angsana.

She was delighted by her full-house and ovation at the end of her show on Jan. 23 in the Meurice Hotel, and hopes that maybe she'll be back again soon.

But having once before been thrust into the spotlight of success, she remains wary and looks to her Buddhism to maintain an essential balance between her work and her personal life, about which she is intensely private.

"I do not permit myself to use the word success very easily. Success for me is a very long journey still," she said.
She has no regrets of her path so far, and maintains she has even forgiven those designers and commercial show-rooms who shunned her in the past.

"I knew what I wanted in life and I worked hard for it. But at the end of the day it's your destiny that will open the door for you.