Sundanese Kebaya and the Making of Indonesian National Dress 1970 to 2000

Abstract

This article examines how Sundanese kebaya entered representations of Indonesian national dress during 1970–2000. It asks how changes in the occasions and presentation of kebaya altered the relationship between regional identification and national femininity. Using the historical method, it brings together newspaper reports, a reproduced fashion clipping, government documentation of West Javanese clothing, and scholarship on dress and gender. Stuart Hall’s constructionist account of representation guides the distinction between a garment’s appearance, its public classification, and its reception. The evidence reveals competing processes. Contemporary commentary associated everyday clothing with practicality, while fashion displays, commemorations, diplomacy, and institutional uniforms gave kebaya renewed public significance. A clipping explicitly headed “Kebaya Sunda” demonstrates that national media could retain regional identification while presenting modified clothing. National visibility therefore did not necessarily entail a uniform design or the disappearance of Sundanese identity. The article argues that the principal transformation concerned the social uses and representational authority of kebaya. Its contribution is a historically qualified account of regional dress within national culture, treating cultural generalisation as a selective process rather than a completed replacement of local meaning.