Iwan Tirta’s Short List

His batik designs come straight from the heart of Javanese tradition, but in other respects Indonesia’s most feted fashion maestro, 75-year-old Iwan Tirta, is a modernist — responsible for getting batik into the pages of Vogue and onto international catwalks. A Yale graduate destined for legal practice, Tirta switched career paths in the 1960s after his interest in batik was awakened during a research project. Since that time, he has built up an exclusive fashion and homeware label, and contributed to the preservation and advancement of batik-production techniques. Here are some of his inspirations.

Javanese royalty
Pakubuwono X, who died in 1938, was the susuhunan, or sultan, of Surakarta (the central Javanese city more commonly known as Solo). He was well read in everything and very forward-looking. His court even combined batik and Art Deco designs.

Painters
I love Raden Saleh, the great 19th century painter, and Srihadi from Bandung, who captured the spirit of Indonesia while being very modern at the same time.

Music
Mozart, Beethoven and Bach are my favorites as a piano player. I find modern music atonal, but a composer like Beethoven is soothing and melodious.

Designers
I love Halston who, without cutting a piece of material, could make a dress, and I love Yves Saint Laurent, who had a certain flair and was also an intellectual.

Literature
I’m a big fan of the Indonesian novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer because of his outspokenness and his descriptions of the social conditions that existed when the Dutch colonists arrived in Indonesia.

— Reported by Jason Tedjasukmana