Text and photos Lieke Muijsert
You can see great-looking people on Wageningen campus. In this column, we put one of them in the spotlight. This time, William Partogi Hamonangan and Asoka, Master’s students in Sustainable Business Innovation and Biobased Sciences, both from Indonesia. They showed their traditional clothes at the cultural fair on campus in March.
William: ‘I am wearing batik, which is a national garment of Indonesia. The pattern of the cloth is different in every region. We have 38 regions now, but sometimes one province can have multiple patterns. As far as I know, in some regions multiple patterns are even mixed. It mainly depends on the ethnicity, and we have hundreds of religions. My batik is from Java Island.
‘We have a shirt and a long skirt that matches with the pattern. In fact ‘batik’ is just the motive, the cloth could be anything, like shoes or purses. The original batik is handmade delicate painting and therefore quite expensive, you pay for the labor. But nowadays, what Asoka and I are wearing, is factory made.
‘It’s definitely something that everyone in Indonesia has. Basically our parents tell us that we have to pack at least one batik to go anywhere. The shirt is kind of a formal but it can also be used as informal clothing. In Indonesia we have national batik cloth day where all Indonesian people will be using batik for that they. I would also wear this cloth to university sometimes. It is something that I am proud to wear.’’It’s definitely something that everyone in Indonesia has. Basically our parents tell us that we have to pack at least one batik to go anywhere. The shirt is kind of a formal but it can also be used as informal clothing. In Indonesia we have national batik cloth day where all Indonesian people will be using batik for that they. I would also wear this cloth to university sometimes. It is something that I am proud to wear.’
