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Uli, whose name means ‘beautiful’, is a lovely Indonesian woman of the Batak ethnic group who is thoughtfully sorting through her relationship to clothes. She is a skilled weaver who tries to earn a living by making the traditional clothing of her ethnic group. As she whiles away hours every day throwing weft between warp yarns, she ponders her challenges and then posts her thoughts on Facebook in the evening when her mother and daughter are asleep.
It is fascinating to read her take on fashion. Here in the Northern nations we are pummeled by a barrage of fashion advertising that incessantly invites us to enhance our beauty and achieve our individual dreams through the purchase of new designs and styles. Uli is not exempt from this bombardment, even in North Sumatara, but on top of that she is situated in a cultural and temporal crossroads that influences her thoughts and choices.
She begins her clothing memories in her post on 17 January 2022 with what she learned at junior highschool – no doubt an element of the Dutch curriculum brought to the region during the colonial era: tall, slender people can wear bright colours and large patterns while heavyset people are better off wearing dark colours and small patterns. She perceived of herself as being on the heavy side, not overly so, but enough that her mother bought clothing for her with small patterns and dark colours. When she reflects on her teen years, it is as though she had been “made to wear hotel curtains or bedspreads from the 19th century”. She grew up in a small Batak village far from a big city.
When she eventually left the village to find work and earn her own living, she developed a new relationship to clothes. She got caught up in the world of fashion. Not only did she have access to a variety of styles but she had the means to purchase them! That was when “all clothes fit my body”. “…hot pants, ¾ length trousers, long straight pipes, bellbottoms, standard, everything looked good.” Uli used the word ‘tangkup’ to describe her appearance, a Batak word used to denote the “fitting” appearance of clothing being worn. “Whether a midi, mini or long dress, it was ‘tangkup’.” She regarded herself as blessed because she had the quality of ‘tangkup’.
Image caption goes here in this box very cute
Now that Uli is older and has returned to her village, she has become critical of fashion, which she sees as “making us all dependent.” Consequently “we no longer see our bodies as beautiful in accordance with the intent of the Almighty,” but “we see our bodies as full of problems… Because of fashion and also imported beliefs, we see ourselves as having bodies full of problems and so we leave everything to the opinions of clothing designers.” She knows this from personal experience. She used to see her calves and thighs as “too big” even though she knows they are beautiful. She felt the need to hide them and they became “white from sunlight deprivation.” She also has “full breasts and in accordance with the dictates of fashion and fanatical Christianity, I covered myself up like a nun.”
Uli’s frustrations with the world of clothing run deep. She is wedged in among a variety of forces. One is mechanization. She learned how to weave as a child, in the tradition of her ethnic group, and today she makes the traditional clothing of her ethnic group. These are oblong pieces of cloth that are hung over the shoulder or wrapped around the waist. However, in the neighbouring town there are mechanical looms, brought in during the colonial era, which produce variants of her laborious and time-consuming hand loomed work much faster and at one fifth the price. Competing with a mechanical loom is no recipe for well being for a hand weaver. It drags the price of textiles down. Uli’s work is vastly underpaid and she barely scrapes by.
Now Uli has chosen to wear the fruits of her own hand loom to Church on Sundays instead of a purchased dress. She noted the progression in her thinking: “… after I started to weave, and read many perspectives about weaving, about heritage textiles of Nusantara, I discovered that the right way to dress was the way our ancestors dressed. They spin, weave textiles for all occasions, and suitable for all circumstances; it is the strength of the patterns, fibres, that they are able to handle nature’s elements and are so durable that they can be passed on to the next generation. Therefore, these are the clothes that are appropriate for these tough economic times. Moreover, clothing that is not cut and sewn highlights the ‘tangkup’ side of every person.”
Uli gave her writing the title, ‘tangkup’ and explained that it denotes ‘fitting clothing’. She had been blessed with the quality of ‘tangkup clothing’, she noted – although there was nothing exceptional about her birth that had augured this good fortune. ‘Tangkup’ means that “I and the clothing I wear are mutually enhancing”. ‘Tangkup’ is not about the quality of the clothing per se, because “if anybody else wears my clothes they may suddenly no longer be nice to look at.”
I find this word ‘tangkup’ interesting and sense that it offers a glimpse into the traditional world of Batak dress. It seems to denote the combination of wearer and clothing. The emphasis is not on the material item. Uli’s perspective reminded me of the words of a Javanese photographer (MJA Nashir) who explained to me years ago that when some people wear clothes, regardless of the quality of the clothes, they look nice, while others don’t look nice regardless of the beauty of their clothing. This was a new perspective on clothing for me at the time and I wondered if there was a spiritual dimension to this talent. When I asked Uli she said she was not aware of a spiritual quality but she thought that charisma and grace figured in the nature of ‘tangkup’.
It strikes me that as we, in the North, search for ways to make our clothing systems relevant once more, and less harmful to people and the physical and animal environment, we might gain from Uli’s insights, quandaries and challenges. The word ‘tangkup’ in the Batak language also denotes the ‘capture of objects and concepts’. May we ‘tangkup’ the Batak perspective on grace and charisma in dress. As an aspiration it holds a promise of beauty. And may the Batak clothing system survive to demonstrate the concept of ‘tangkup’ – even while this may entail an overhaul of the fashion industry.
