A Portrait of Lulu Lutfi Labibi

Reimagining tradition and reclaiming lurik

Lulu Lutfi Labibi in his studio in Kotagede, Yogyakarta. Image courtesy of Lulu Lutfi Labibi.

In the hands of Lulu Lutfi Labibi, textiles refuse to conform to predictable silhouettes. They twist, drape and fold into forms that feel at once spontaneous and deliberate. Based in Yogyakarta, the designer has cultivated a language of asymmetry and deconstruction, that is grounded in traditional techniques yet open to contemporary gestures. The striped handwoven fabric of Central Java, lurik, has become one of his signatures, returning season after season in various patterns and imaginative expressions.

Born in Banyumas, Central Java, Lulu spent much of his childhood exploring different creative outlets. “I loved drawing from a very young age,” he says. His mother, a schoolteacher, would seat him under her desk while she taught, armed only with paper and coloured pencils. He would sit there for hours, sketching in silence. From his father, Lulu inherited a love of words. By the time he reached middle and high school, his interests had broadened to include writing and calligraphy, and he regularly entered various competitions, filling his room with a growing trophy collection.

His father had hoped he would attend a madrasah and pursue religious studies, and Lulu obliged, though he admits those three years were far from enjoyable. “Eventually I braved myself to tell them what I wanted to do at university,” he says. He enrolled in an interior design programme, only to discover he was not a “numbers” person. After a year, he pivoted to studying textiles at Indonesia Institute of the Arts Yogyakarta.

“During that time, I would spend my dinner money to go to the warnet,” he recalls, referring to the local internet cafés. “Back then, our resources were limited to books, but I wanted to learn more. So I would attend textile class in the morning, then stay online until dawn, teaching myself whatever I could find.” While many of his peers were unaware of celebrated Japanese designers such as Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo and Belgian luminary Dries Van Noten, their work had already found a place in his growing mental archive.

Like many emerging designers of the time, he believed success in fashion required moving to a big city. After his graduation, he went back and forth between Yogyakarta and Jakarta, meeting clients and building his network. During this period, he supplemented his income by entering fashion competitions, using the prize money to pay his rent when he won. One of the most memorable was Lomba Perancang Mode, organised by Femina magazine.

The recognition quickly brought his name into print, but he still found it challenging to convince people that his designs, which most deem as too avant-garde and deconstructed, were wearable and fit into everyday life. The momentum shifted in 2015 when public figures such as actress Dian Sastrowardoyo began wearing his pieces, sparking a wave of new interest. “Of course, on the one hand, it is great,” he says. “But I also wondered, why did it take that to make people notice?” That same year, he also began to see copies of his work appearing in the market, a bittersweet confirmation of his growing influence.

The experience forced him to reconsider his creative process. “It came to a point where I had to ask myself if it was too easy to replicate,” he remembered. One moment in particular stayed with him, when a seamstress noted that a pattern he had laboured over could easily be copied. At first, the comment unsettled him, but he chose to trust his instincts and move forward with the design.

In hindsight, that decision was about more than a single garment. It was a refusal to design from fear, and a commitment to honesty as the truest form of authorship. “I think one thing I have taken away from the past decade is to be honest when creating. Otherwise, I would feel trapped in my own designs, and my collections would suffer because of it.”

“I think one thing I have taken away from the past decade is to be honest when creating. Otherwise, I would feel trapped in my own designs, and my collections would suffer because of it.”

That pursuit of honesty has since become the spine of Lulu’s practice. His collections, he explains, are rooted in the everyday—gestures, habits, and fleeting moments that often pass unnoticed. Since 2015, each has been accompanied by a written narrative. It is a practice that has become inseparable from the clothes themselves.

From the start, Lulu has turned to Indonesia’s textile traditions—batik and tenun, especially lurik—as his foundation. Once bound by rigid codes of class and hierarchy, the striped Javanese cotton, its patterns and colours imbued with symbolic meaning, is reimagined in his collections as something democratic and unpretentious. “I want to bring lurik into daily life in my own way,” he explains.

This vision has yielded a series of distinctive geometric patterns that break away from the vertical orientation and five-line rhythm that often define conventional lurik. Designs such as Lurik Baur Rupa, Duka Luruh, Langit Senja, and Lukat Kayuh explore deceptively simple geometries that, in reality, take artisans in Klaten months to complete. “I like to challenge the idea of what is beautiful,” Lulu reflects. “When I design, something has to be questioned, unsettled. It cannot be too neat or too pretty.”

In Spring/Summer 2025’s ‘Kala’, Lulu turned to time as both healer and teacher, a vessel for growth. The idea materialised in lurik layered with batik hand-painting—turquoise grids disrupted by flashes of pink and yellow, brushstrokes dissolving into gradients—shaped into loose shirts and draped skirts, a departure from his usual monochrome. A season earlier, in Spring/Summer 2024’s ‘Kayuh’, he reflected on the act of pedalling forward as a metaphor for continuity and self-discovery. Here, fine-lined lurik traced the rhythm of rainfall, cut into a sleeveless beskap—once a rigid Javanese court and ceremonial jacket—softened into a more fluid silhouette.

Despite the confidence and ease he finds in working independently, Lulu actively pursues cross-disciplinary collaborations. One of the most enduring is with the art duo Indieguerillas, beginning also in 2015 with a collection that reimagined the traditional wayang character Petruk as a supermodel, debuting at Yogyakarta’s annual contemporary art festival, ARTJOG. Their worlds collided and converged in deliberate contrast: Indieguerillas’ bold, graphic visual language set against Lulu’s asymmetrical silhouettes and a restrained palette of red, white, and black. Late last year, they marked the ninth anniversary of their partnership with a show in Gwangju, presented as part of Asia Culture Week 2024.

Lulu Lutfi Labibi and Indieguerilla’s collaboration collection, ‘Petruk Jadi Supermodel’, which debuted in ARTJOG 2015. Image courtesy of Lulu Lutfi Labibi.

His long-time friendship with singer-songwriter Rara Sekar inspired ‘Jeda Yang Ajaib’ in 2021, a collaboration honouring the late poet Gunawan Wiryanto. The project unfolded as an immersive performance, a fashion show interwoven with Rara’s guitar, cello accompaniment, and Wiryanto’s poetry. Plenty of the visuals from photography and most recently, a short film for his latest ‘Kala’ collection were also part of his creative process. For Lulu, fashion, sound, image and narrative exists less as separate forms but a continuum. They are different forms that carry the same story forward.

Visiting Lulu’s studio in Kotagede reveals the same sensibility that animates his work. A low Javanese doorway opens onto a quiet courtyard, where a narrow fish pond winds lazily along its length. At the back, the boutique offers glimpses of mannequins draped in Lulu’s signature pieces. Though expanded over the years, the studio retains its original character: wooden structures and exposed concrete pillars remain, and an old well is now visible through the glass top of a table. Lulu’s instinct for interior design, which echoes his early university studies, reveals a quiet dialogue between tradition and modernity that mirrors the quality of his garments.

Next door, his home hums with quiet life. It was here that Lulu spent much of his time during the pandemic, a period he recalls as a turning point in his practice. Daily rituals—brewing coffee, designing at his own pace, cycling to a favorite mie ayam stall—became exercises in observation and reflection, feeding directly into his work. “The way I thought at 25 is very different from how I think now,” he reflects. “I realised I did not need a big studio in Jakarta, or to be showing at multiple fashion weeks. Finding this home in Kotagede was pivotal and revealed what matters most to me.”

Lulu Lutfi Labibi’s Spring/Summer 2024 Collection ‘Kayuh’. Image courtesy of Lulu Lutfi Labibi.

These domestic rhythms, documented on his secondary Instagram account Dalam Kediaman, reflect the same care and deliberation evident in his designs. For Lulu, studio, home, garments, and storytelling exist as an extension of one another. Every experiment, whether in fabric, spatial design, or storytelling, reveals a designer deeply attuned to both material and human experience, quietly expanding the possibilities of Indonesian textiles and design.

To learn more about Lulu Lutfi Labibi, please visit @lululutfilabibi and @dalamkediaman on Instagram.

A Portrait of Lulu Lutfi Labibi

Reimagining tradition and reclaiming lurik

“I think one thing I have taken away from the past decade is to be honest when creating. Otherwise, I would feel trapped in my own designs, and my collections would suffer because of it.”

September 2025

Fresh Faces: Elena Nguyen