Australian fashion taps into Indonesian market

The World Today
Reporter: Ashley Hall
ELEANOR HALL: For years, the Australian fashion industry has focused its efforts on getting the attention of major buyers in Europe and the United States, but there’s a new target closer to home.

Indonesian stores are buying Australian fashion in record quantities and the Australian Government’s trade office is helping local designers to expand their toehold in the Indonesian market, as Ashley Hall reports from the last day of Australian Fashion Week.

ASHLEY HALL: Sunshine streams through the full length windows of a harbourside restaurant, splashing the walls with the colours of the bottles at the bar.

Around the outside of the room and on the balcony, perfectly groomed men and women perch on stools clutching drinks, watching wafer thin models strut their stuff in the clothes of the Sydney-based designer, Jayson Brunsdon.

JAYSON BRUNSDON: It was kind of inspired by Fellini, women in his films so it had a Roman feel to it and a classical kind of feel to it, but it was for me it was kind of very much about exploring my signature looks, fabric manipulation and print, structure, lots of duchess satin which I always love to use.

ASHLEY HALL: And colours?

JAYSON BRUNSDON: There weren’t any. (laughs)

ASHLEY HALL: Why not?

JAYSON BRUNSDON: Well basically it was a kind of rush. It is a resort collection, it isn’t spring/summer. It goes into store in October so normally we don’t start selling until June but we kind of rushed the whole thing forward and of course, the colours hadn’t turned up from Italy, the coloured fabrics hadn’t turned up so I thought well, you know, I’ll just make something, do a dramatic statement and do the whole thing in ivory.

ASHLEY HALL: Jayson Brunsdon is one of a crop of Australian designers who has identified the potential to develop Asia as a prime market for Australian fashion.

He’s just this week opened his first store in Singapore and he has an exclusive deal with one of Jakarta’s top fashion stores, Velvet.

JAYSON BRUNSDON: Asian girls love to shop. They love fashion so they have such a hunger for it. It’s a fantastic market.

ASHLEY HALL: What is it about your fashion and/or Australian fashion that is received so well in Indonesia particularly?

JAYSON BRUNSDON: I think it is probably we share a similar climate and Australians do have a love of kind of a free spirited glamour, and the Indonesians are getting a little bored with European luxury houses and they’re looking for more of … something glamorous but something probably a little easier, I guess, to access and I think it is probably working well for them.

(Sound of a photographer taking photographs)

ASHLEY HALL: Fashion exports contribute about $240-million to Australia’s economy and trade officials are hoping to grow that share. This year, they made sure the largest contingent of overseas buyers to Fashion Week came from Indonesia.

Lucy Coward is Austrade’s senior export adviser:

LUCY COWARD: About four to five years ago when Austrade got involved with Fashion Week, it was very difficult to get designers to give seats and invites to the Indonesians but because they didn’t understand the market.

This year we’ve got seven stores. They’re in hot demand. They came last year I think, in the week they placed about 47 orders just in the week alone last year and we’re expecting that, and hoping that they will do the same this year.

ASHLEY HALL: One of the barriers Austrade had to push through was the perception that fashion customers in the world’s most populous Muslim nation would be too modest or too poor to buy Australian fashion.

Lucy Coward says that stereotype is simply wrong.

LUCY COWARD: There is an exceptionally large middle and upper class who don’t dress in the way that we imagine them to dress. They have money, they like fashion - European, Australian or otherwise, and they’re prepared to be fashionable and wear what they want.

ASHLEY HALL: The founder of Australian Fashion Week, Simon Lock, has been working and travelling throughout Asia for the past 10 years or so.

SIMON LOCK: Consumers there are looking for something different, out of the ordinary and something beyond the omnipresent luxury brands of Louis Vuitton or Prada, and the Australian designers are filling that role very successfully.

ASHLEY HALL: When Simon Lock began Australian Fashion Week 13 years ago, he recognised that most of the world took its fashion lead from Europe.

SIMON LOCK: We targeted those key fashion markets in Europe and North America, got a small foothold there for the Australian designers.

Started to build a media profile, important publications like US Vogue or what ever it might be and then of course, you know, people in Jakarta are now going “Oh wow, that label is going well in New York. Wouldn’t that be cool to have it here?”

ASHLEY HALL: Now that Indonesian buyers have taken notice, it won’t be long before Australian fashion designers start to broaden their focus.

SIMON LOCK: Using some of the closer Asia Pacific markets to start to get a recognition of brand profile and then to translate that into big business in China is what it’s all about.

ASHLEY HALL: Mr Lock says the time is right for Australian fashion houses to start forging partnerships that help them gain access to the massive Chinese market.

ELEANOR HALL: Ashley Hall reporting from Australian Fashion Week.

Source : The World today / www.abc.net.au