Indonesia Fashion Week | Indonesia, Asia
Indonesia Fashion Week: Building a National Fashion Identity Through Heritage
Indonesia Fashion Week (IFW) is a national fashion movement initiated by the Asosiasi Perancang Pengusaha Mode Indonesia (APPMI) — the Indonesian Fashion Designers and Entrepreneurs Association. Its first edition took place in February 2012 at the Jakarta Convention Center, and by 2026 the event has grown into its 14th consecutive year, making it one of Indonesia’s longest-running annual fashion platforms. Where many fashion weeks are driven primarily by media companies or commercial sponsors, IFW was built from the outset as a collaboration between designers, government and academia, with the explicit goal of positioning Indonesia as a genuine center of world fashion rather than a follower of international trends.
That collaborative model was formalized early on through a Creative Economy–Fashion blueprint developed jointly by APPMI and four government ministries: the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy, the Ministry of Trade, and the Ministry of Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises. Each edition of IFW is still organized around this four-way synergy of government, industry, associations and academia, which distinguishes it structurally from more commercially-driven fashion weeks elsewhere in the region and gives it a mandate that extends beyond staging runway shows into education and small-business development within the fashion sector.
Growth Across Fourteen Editions
Since its 2012 debut, IFW has consistently returned to the Jakarta Convention Center each year, building a program that mixes established designers with fashion schools, regional craft councils and emerging local labels. The 2026 edition, staged over five days from 29 July to 2 August, brought together designer collections, fashion labels, Dekranasda (regional craft council) showcases and fashion school presentations under one roof — reflecting how the event has grown from a single designer-led showcase into a broader annual gathering for Indonesia’s fashion and creative economy ecosystem. Government sponsorship has also evolved alongside the event itself: the 2026 edition carried state bank BTN as headline sponsor, styled officially as “BTN Indonesia Fashion Week.”
Mission: Heritage as the Core of Indonesian Fashion
IFW’s stated vision is to explore and standardize Indonesia’s creative heritage as the foundation for the country’s fashion identity, rather than treating heritage as a decorative theme layered onto Western silhouettes. The 2026 edition ran under the theme “Ulos Simetria,” built around the traditional ulos weaving of North Sumatra. APPMI chairwoman and IFW president Poppy Dharsono described ulos as more than a ceremonial textile — a symbol of warmth, balance, harmony and unity — used as the throughline for that year’s collections, including a collaboration between Dharsono and designer Torang Sitorus. Beyond the runway, Dharsono has consistently urged Indonesian designers to treat cultural heritage as the basis of their creative identity, and framed IFW’s role as giving stage time to designers who show genuine commitment to Indonesian craft, not only those who are already established.
IFW has also expanded its ambitions beyond the showroom floor. The 2026 edition paired its runway program with visitor trails through Jakarta’s art exhibitions and culinary scene, positioning the event as a tourism driver for the capital as well as a fashion showcase, in line with its Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy backing.
Indonesia Fashion Week vs. Jakarta Fashion Week
Indonesia now hosts two major national-scale fashion weeks in Jakarta, and it is worth being precise about how they differ. Jakarta Fashion Week (JFW) was launched in 2008 by media conglomerate Femina Group, with backing from the DKI Jakarta Tourism Office, APPMI and the Indonesian Fashion Designers Association (IPMI); it is now run by GCM Group and has grown into Southeast Asia’s largest fashion week by scale, with a strong commercial focus on connecting Indonesian designers — including its modest and Muslim fashion sector — to international buyers and media.
IFW, by contrast, is organized directly by APPMI itself rather than a media company, and leans more explicitly on heritage textiles and government-industry-academia synergy as its organizing principle rather than commercial scale alone. In practice the two events are complementary rather than competing: JFW functions as Indonesia’s primary international trade and media showcase, while IFW positions itself as the platform most closely tied to preserving and modernizing Indonesia’s regional textile traditions, from batik to ulos, on the national stage.
Indonesia Fashion Week
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