A client came to visit us to say he was still extremely happy with the jacket we made for him in 2012. Back in 2012 he was imagining how it would look if we would create a suit out of two same color and pattern sarongs. A sarong or "sarung" denotes the lower garment worn typically by the Indonesian. He wanted to have a tailored suit through which he could express his interest in his Javanese roots. It has been a while since we have seen the jacket and the fit is still perfect. So we decided to take some pictures of it. Although he wore the jacket at parties where he would dance intensively, the jacket is still in good shape after more than three years. 

The torso part of the jacket and cuffs are made out of one complete sarong. The golden-brown and black floral pattern is typical for fabric from Solo, Central Java. This piece is a modern commercial cloth and has a soft texture which makes the jacket comfortable to wear.

Unlined batik jacket tailored with Napolitano sartorial techniques, with Nehru collar. Torso fabric is cotton batik from Solo, Central Java Indonesia, sleeves are black cotton. One complete sarong is used to make the jacket. Seven buttons and three buttons on the sleeves with working button holes.

Technique

The original batik cloth has more of stiff waxy texture. Batik is a technique of wax resist dyeing applied to whole cloth, or cloth made using this technique. Batik is made either by drawing dots and lines of the resist with a spouted tool called a canting, or by printing the resist with a copper stamp called a cap. The applied wax resists dyes and therefore allows the artisan to colour selectively by soaking the cloth in one colour, removing the wax with boiling water, and repeating if multiple colours are desired. Originally all the materials used were locally available to the Indonesians, cotton, beeswax and vegetable dye for the coloring. Experts say that despite the fact that batik techniques for cloth alteration were already done by the early Egyptians, the technique was most developed in Indonesia.