The Study of Philosophical Meaning of Batik and Kimono Motifs to Foster Collaborative Creative Industry

Abstract

It is interesting to conduct a comparative study of Javanese (Indonesia) and Japanese (Japan) culture especially in terms of traditional clothing of Javanese Batik and Japanese Kimono to formulate how a collaborative idea can be developed to foster a global creative clothing industry. This article aims at: (1) exploring a comparative study of Batik and Kimono by understanding their philosophical importance as cultural products; and (2) formulating a collaborative clothing of Batik-Kimono as a creative industry of global product to in the international forum today. The paper is based on a qualitative research employing purposive sampling and data triangulation technique by considering the socio-cultural context to interpret the qualitative importance of Batik-Kimono. The sources of data are collected from the informants – makers and designers, documents and social occurrences related to the creation of the cultural products. The findings show that both batik and kimono motifs have philosophical meaning representing their cultural identity for they have been rooted in each society of origin which own valuable virtue and excellence. Batik-Kimono, alternatively called as Kimba in this paper, is an asset that has a multi-purpose, not only in the context of preserving culture, but also in the field of creative industry. The combined motifs and designs of Kimba, therefore, reflect on the philosophical value by consistently paying attention to the aesthetics rooted in their cultures of origin to strongly appear as a new blended fashion in both countries and if not in the international forum. The model of development in this paper is presented as a four-season Kimba fashion.