Fashion Stance

Samudra Hartanto has traveled a long way in the name of fashion. Kunang Helmi-Picard caught up with the Indonesian in Paris to learn more about the hectic world of haute couture.

The power of fashion emanates from the imposing art nouveau building that is Jean-Paul Gaultier’s headquarters. Samudra Hartanto works here once a week in Gaultier’s sixth floor design studio. The French couturier creates Hermès women’s wear collections, besides his own ready-to-wear and haute couture brands, partially financed by Hermès.

The rest of Samudra’s work week is spent at the starkly modern Hermès headquarters in Pantin, on the outskirts of Paris. When not planning for next season with the creative team, Samudra travels to various factories around Europe, checking fabric supplies or controlling leather tanneries as far away as Madagascar.

He is on the go all the time.  

“The fashion calendar is getting more crowded,” the soft-spoken 37-year-old fashion liaison readily admits. “Now it is not only two ready-to-wear collections a year, but also the cruise collection and the pre-season collection, the haute couture twice a year, as well as accessories. There’s hardly any time to take a real holiday.”

It has been a long journey to where he is today. Modesty conceals the determination and discipline needed to achieve success in the glamorous but demanding fashion sphere.

Born in Malang, East Java, he was always fascinated by clothes. His mother bought local women’s lifestyle magazines like Femina and foreign fashion magazines for inspiration to create her own personal style. Drawing on paper, the young Samudra would pore over the fashion pages, copying the models to create styles of his own.

When Samudra went to Sydney with his sister to study fashion illustration at the Whitehouse School of Design, he realized that Australia also had many Asian residents. He became less self-conscious about living abroad and being different.

“I had already set my heart on studying fashion in London and this was the best way to prepare my portfolio for the entrance exam,” he said after the Hermès autumn-winter 2007 show in March.

He went on to study pattern-making and fashion design at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London. Samudra had already succeeded in persuading his businessman father that a career in fashion was feasible.

He also set out to gain practical experience. While waiting to hear if he was accepted into the RCA, he worked as an assistant to renowned Indonesian fashion designer Biyan.

Professor John Miles at the RCA introduced him to the intricacies of cut, fabrics and knitwear, among other skills. After graduating, Samudra worked for English designer Norman Hartnell, before moving to Whistles and Amanda Wakely.

It was Miles who recommended Samudra to Louis Vuitton managers seeking new talent to set up a women’s wear section under American Marc Jacobs. Samudra crossed the Channel for the interview and was accepted as an accessories designer.

“It was an exciting period beginning in 1997 because we were part of a new team, creating a novel image of apparel to suit the brand – it was not only about bags and other accessories. We all had a sense of achievement.”

In 2003, he was asked if he was interested in joining the Gaultier team at Hermès. He began to work for the family firm as a liaison designer between Gaultier and Hermès in 2004.

 “I did feel sad in a certain way leaving Vuitton, but it was also invigorating to try out something new at Hermès,” he said.

He describes Louis Vuitton fashion as being clean and pure, like a modern jet-setter, with the importance put on leather accessories besides the garments. He feels that at Hermès the bags are not the priority. Samudra concentrates more on the clothes directly, undertaking research and making sketches of new ideas.

He leaves his mark. In the upcoming spring-summer collection, featured in the fashion group’s latest catalog, there is distinct Indonesian touch in the white blouse with larger sleeves, in the converted style of a kebaya, worn with a brightly colored long skirt. It is bound up in front as one would wear a casual sarong.

The Indonesian can fall back on the extensive Hermès archives for ideas about stitching leather or go to other designers’ archives.

 “I once went to the Chanel archives at the Museum for Decorative Arts where we had to put on white gloves to actually take out the garments. What a sense of detail and superb tailoring Coco Chanel had! She used jersey decades ago and never stamped all her outfits with the double CC logo.”

One of the first decisions for future collections involves the color scheme, and Hermès tends to be more neutral. Fabrics are then tested, with the silk from China but treated in Italy or France, and wool, cotton, synthetics, linen or hemp-linen mix from Japan.

His favorite older couturier is Yohji Yamamoto, who creates poetic collections for women who are not sex symbols; the designs are sensual without showing skin and rely on traditional know-how. Among the couturiers of his generation, Samudra likes Cypriot Hussein Chalayan who also studied in London. He is another poet of fashion, but more intellectual than Yamamoto.

“Oh! And I remember Prayudi’s return to the kebaya and other traditional Indonesian garments …,” he said of the late Indonesian designer.

He may have more to say, but he excuses himself, saying he must make the most of his one day a week at Gaultier’s headquarters. 

And so Samudra Hartanto slips out of the ground-floor conference room to return to the light-filled atelier, and more work.

Perhaps we will again meet by chance in our shared quarter of Paris, when he is returning from swimming and I am on the way to the Metro. Then a whiff of tropical Java will suddenly permeate the elegantly gray atmosphere of Paris.

Home