Indonesia Fashion Week opened its 14th edition at the Jakarta Convention Center in Senayan on July 29, 2026, running through August 3 under the theme "Ulos Simetria" — a title that placed ulos, the handwoven textile associated with Batak communities of North Sumatra, at the center of the country's largest fashion platform. What followed on the runway was less a tribute than an argument about how a heritage cloth should function in a working wardrobe.
Poppy Dharsono, president of Indonesia Fashion Week and chair of the Indonesian Fashion Designer Entrepreneurs Association (APPMI), which initiates the event, described ulos as more than a traditional fabric from North Sumatra — a symbol of warmth, balance, harmony and unity. Her framing of the theme was explicitly industrial. "Indonesia's fashion industry must continue to maintain a balance between tradition and innovation, between local wisdom and global competition, and between cultural values and the future of the creative industry," she said.
Ulos is woven by hand and carries specific ceremonial and social functions within Batak life. The 2026 theme took its geometry — axial, repeating, symmetrical — as a design principle rather than a print to be reproduced. That distinction matters. A designer can engage a textile's structure and philosophy without cutting up the cloth itself, and coverage that treats every heritage reference as identical use flattens the difference between reinterpretation and decoration.
