Photo by Hafidz Muhammad A for Antara.
For the past few weeks, Dukuh Atas Park, located in the heart of Jakarta’s Sudirman business district, has been filled with young people. From afternoon to night, gorgeously dressed teenagers have used a zebra crossing as a catwalk, creating a DIY fashion show that has been dubbed “Citayam Fashion Week”.
Citayam is an area on the outskirts of Jakarta, about an hour south of Dukuh Atas by train, between Depok and Bogor. The phenomenon was named “Citayam Fashion Week” because most of the teenagers who hang out in Dukuh Atas are from these suburban areas of Greater Jakarta.
Citayam Fashion Week began to take off in June, when interviews with several of the teens went viral on TikTok. The unique sense of street style, carefree attitudes, and fun teen slang made for compelling social media posts. These, in turn, attracted the attention of more teenagers and the mainstream media and eventually politicians.
The media began calling Dukuh Atas “The Next Harajuku,” referring to the Tokyo area known for its youth culture and bold street style. Celebrities, professional models, content creators, and politicians soon joined in, creating their own content to attract viewers and send a message of support to teens.
Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan has said the city government will not try to prevent teenagers from gathering in the area. After a formal meeting, he even invited the European Union ambassador to Indonesia, the vice president of the European Investment Bank and their staff to strut across the Dukuh Atas crosswalk in their business suits, not exactly capturing the edgy street style. which is a fundamental aspect. of the trend
But not everyone has supported the phenomenon. Many critics have complained that teenagers loiter, litter and cause traffic congestion. Indeed, Citayam Fashion Week and the emerging tensions around it have exposed some of the deep class issues facing Jakarta and the people who live in it.
Recovering the ‘Golden Triangle’
Jalan Sudirman is part of the so-called “Golden Triangle”, an area bordered by Jalan MH Thamrin-Sudirman, Jalan HR Rasuna Said and Jalan Gatot Subroto that serves as Jakarta’s central business district.
The preparation for the 2018 Asian Games prompted the local government to beautify the Sudirman area, revitalizing footpaths, installing park benches, and building comfortable bus shelters and modern walkways. Jalan Sudirman now presents a sterile image of Jakarta as a modern and safe metropolis, supposedly inspiring similar urbanization in other corners of the country.
Smack in the middle of Jalan Sudirman is the Dukuh Atas transportation hub, where Commuterline trains from outlying Jakarta (Bekasi, Depok and Bogor) converge with multiple TransJakarta bus routes (another affordable option for suburban commuters to access the Jakarta business district), Jakarta’s new and more expensive MRT, which began operating in 2019, as well as the BNI City station that connects to the airport.
Different classes of society meet in Dukuh Atas: minimum wage workers who live in the suburbs and middle class office workers who commute to their jobs around Jalan Sudirman or transit to catch the next train or bus home. In August 2019, when the Jakarta MRT opened, the city government redeveloped the Dukuh Atas area into a public park. He closed a street, turning it into a muraled pedestrian thoroughfare, built a skate park and advertised the space as open to all.
While city life can often be associated with glamor and success, Puskapa and Unicef research found that city youth are rarely included in decision-making processes and often adults ignore them. They long for access and for their voices to be heard. A news report noted that Jakarta Governor Baswedan supported Citayam Fashion Week because he believed it could inspire young people to one day seek work in the city, a hint at how young people are only valued when they grow up and They become part of the job. strength.
Citayam Fashion Week is therefore about young people communicating their desire (and ability) to penetrate the urban landscape in their own way. It is also a clear indicator of the need for open space in overcrowded Greater Jakarta, as poor urban planning in areas like Depok leaves young people without space to express themselves.
The teens at Citayam Fashion Week are changing up Sudirman in many ways. The term SCBD, which usually refers to “Sudirman Central Business District”, the area where the Jakarta Stock Exchange and major technology and e-commerce companies are located, has now been reused to also represent “Sudirman, Citayam, Similarly, the term “Anak SCBD” (SCBD kids), which was previously used to refer to the wealthiest millennial and Gen Z office workers employed in SCBD, is now used as a nickname for teenagers. who meet at Dukuh Atas.
The appropriation of the term SCBD is both a humorous twist on Jakarta’s formal, capital-oriented image, as well as an emotional expression of adolescents’ desire to be part of a city that has pushed low- and middle-income residents to the periphery.
But it is not just a discursive appropriation of the term SCBD. This longing to be part of the urban landscape also takes obvious physical form, as teenagers dominate the Dukuh Atas pedestrian crossing, stopping passing cars and motorcycles, and claiming their right to the city.
Even so, this takeover of public space is ephemeral. At the end of the day, the teens face an hour-long train ride home, their efforts represented only in short-lived social media posts.
class struggle
By adapting Dukuh Atas Park as a place to hang out and show off their street style, young people reclaim ownership of public space and express themselves with their limited resources. They have been applauded for their creativity in using off-brand clothing, knock-offs, and local brand makeup, and effortlessly combining them.
As the trend has taken off, some challenges have emerged. Teenagers have become famous specifically for their bold, low-budget adaptations of brand-name fashion. But others have derided her fashion as “tacky,” revealing the deep class and income divisions that are a feature of modern Jakarta.
As Citayam Fashion Week has grown in popularity, and celebrities and social media stars have sought to participate, the phenomenon is drifting further and further away from the grassroots ethos that made it popular in the first place. Several content creators have recently admitted that they are endorsed by brands to showcase their products at Dukuh Atas. Similarly, actor Baim Wong even attempted to trademark the term “Citayam Fashion Week” last week, and quickly backed off after he was attacked online.
The Jakarta government has started discussing relocating Citayam Fashion Week to another area of Jakarta, or only allowing it on weekends, as it has started to cause traffic congestion. Unsurprisingly, some members of the government have said they would crack down on male teenagers in female clothing, apparently under the guise of “protecting” teenagers.
It is important to ask who really benefits from the growing popularity of Citayam Fashion Week and if young people are really accessing the prosperity promoted by the city. There have been several reports of teenagers sleeping on the sidewalks after missing the last train home and later being described as a nuisance.
Citayam Fashion Week should not only be seen as the product of young people’s creativity and bold sense of expression, but also as blatant evidence of Jakarta’s stark class divisions and the challenges faced by teenagers seeking to transgress them.
Hopefully, the popularity of Citayam Fashion Week will help the public better understand the aspirations of young people and see their value beyond participation in the workforce. The phenomenon should also serve as a reminder to the government that the city urgently needs more inclusive public spaces, and should be doing much more to improve the living conditions of precarious youth on the outskirts.
Source: indonesiaatmelbourne.unimelb.edu.au