Agnes Linggar Budhisurya, Dedicated to Fabric Painting

Age has never stopped Agnes from engaging in creative work. She actively paints on fabrics for gowns or her private collection. The brush strokes emanating from her mind 'conjure' fascinating paintings out of blank cloth

KOMPAS/SOELASTRI SOEKIRNO

Agnes Linggar Budhisurya,

Agnes Linggar Budhisurya, 78, has been a fashion designer by profession for over 60 years, but she has a rare specialization. Besides designing clothes, she also creates hand-painted gowns. In this way, she makes gowns according to the personality and physical condition of their wearers. The work is intricate and takes a long time.

Although the paintings may be ready, Agnes continues to improve them by adding other colors, such as making color gradations to give the gowns a vivid look when worn. If a customer wishes the gown to cover specific body parts, she puts some more colors to make the gowns elegant and beautiful on their bodies.

Her skill in creating hand-painted gowns has made Agnes famous especially among those who are fond of exclusive clothing. The late veteran designer Peter Sie once admired Agnes’ hand-painted gowns. She related that one day after watching a fashion show displaying her works, Peter, who had frequently received garment orders from then-president Sukarno and family, said, “Agnes, I wish these were my designs.”

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Painting on fabrics in the realist style has been her desire since childhood. Getting orders or not, she keeps working. “Sometimes I paint at the studio on Saturday,” said Agnes on Thursday (6/4/2023) in Jakarta. Usually on that day her grandchildren come to learn painting from their grandma.

She paints on various sizes of cloths so that she has frames of different measurements. Iie, a senior assistant of Agnes, said there were 2-square-meter frames in the warehouse. When Agnes paints, her staff members occasionally hold the frame to make her work easier. For her own collection, Agnes is free to choose her themes. “I just create what’s on my mind,” she said,

To make the colors of her paintings conform to their original hues, she applies various techniques. Sometimes she spontaneously makes a single brush stroke only, but at other times she has to repeatedly paint on certain parts to get the most suitable hues.

There are times when the paint she uses spreads as she applies it with a brush to a cloth. “I have to hurriedly wipe it and dry it with a hair dryer. Sometimes I sprinkle the paint to produce a distinctive effect. I’m not easily satisfied,” she said,

It made me dizzy searching for models of a hen with five lovely chicks.

While painting for her satisfaction, Agnes often receives orders for her hand-painted gowns such as those for weddings, Chinese New Year or other occasions. She once got an order for a gown painted with a fierce but beautiful tigress. “Fierce but beautiful, it must be a female tiger, right, he-he.”

She also received an order for a gown bearing the images of a mother hen with five lovely chicks and a rooster of a certain size. “It made me dizzy searching for models of a hen with five lovely chicks,” said Agnes.

She could not find the models on the internet. Finally, she got the idea of painting the chicken family by clipping pictures of the hen and chicks and attaching them to create the images that gave an adorable and happy appearance. Her weariness was compensated for by the response of the customer, who was pleased with Agnes’ work.

KOMPAS/SOELASTRI SOEKIRNO

Books on various fashion models by Agnes Linggar Budhisurya, a fashion designer specializing in dresses with her paintings on Thursday (6/4/2023)

For pocket money

Although she has long experience in the fashion world and was once a clothing supplier for retail companies in the United States, Japan and several European countries, Agnes only learned fashion as an autodidact and from her parents and older sister, who was a seamstress. Her skill in drawing embroidering motifs and working on them is derived from her embroiderer.

Her creative steps and innovations seem to have originated in the education of her late mother and father, Tjan Kiem Hong and Liem Tjoen Hwat, whose children were required to work so as to get pocket money. Her mother made wedding dresses while her father was a florist. She and her three siblings thus had to work to help their father tie up fresh flowers so that they would look attractive when they bloomed. She also learned to make flowers from paper. “As a child, I was a money seeker, I made anything and sold it so as to get some money,” she recalled, laughing.

When she lived in Jember, she and her older sister, Josphine Linggar (now a painter), sold the pictures of neighboring children they drew. When she studied at Gadjah Mada University around 1964 before moving to the University of Indonesia (UI), she increased her pocket money by selling blouses with the pictures of buyers. “The buyers were boarding house room-mates.”

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After her father’s death, she and family moved to Jakarta. The family’s economic constraints prompted Agnes to make clothes to be sold to shops in Cikini and Pasar Baru, Jakarta. Shop owners notified her of the defects in the clothes to enable Agnes to make improvements. She learned from the experience to produce better clothing.

At the end of 1969, she dropped out from UI due to her marriage to Teddy Budhisurya. However, she still had time to boost her fashion business so that she recruited 150 employees. She also made embroidered clothing that led to the government asking her to join exhibitions in New York, Japan and other countries. Visiting buyers placed big orders.

Her products still amaze people.

She fulfilled local buyers’ demand and foreign orders for special garments. To meet the orders, she and her husband set up a garment plant in Cibinong with 500 workers while maintaining her studio at home. Sadly, this business was hit by the 1998 monetary crisis. The plant closed down. But what hurt her was that her old customers produced imitations of her clothes.

Agnes was angered because the imitations were sold at low prices while she had produced the originals with special effort. Her irritation made her return to hand-painted clothing so as not to be imitated by others. “Around 1999, I got back to painting on fabrics,” said Agnes.

Since then. She has again been engaged in painting that she applies to fabrics to produce clothing. As a senior, Agnes keeps painting on fabrics. Her products still amaze people.

Agnes Linggar Budhisurya

Born: Jember, April 1945

Husband: Teddy Budhisurya

Children: Four

Education: Faculty of Architecture, University of Indonesia, and Gadjah Mada University (unfinished)

Awards, including: Lifetime Achievement Award from MNC Group, 2015

This article was translated by Aris Prawira.