A glimpse inside Indonesia's music scene.
I often relate how people dress up to what they listen to — because that's also how I dress up every morning, and this event is a good example to prove that. What I love more about festivals is that it's not really like usual concerts, I get to see a fusion of people dressing up differently and that's a direct visual representation of the music they listen to. Way back before blogs and instagram is a thing, before the word 'personal style blogger' even exists, I often found my inspiration to dress up at the music festivals I went to. There would be cool chicks at senior school concerts, watching indie bands and sporting quirky outfits I won't see in the mall or anywhere (the kind of outfits you will see displayed on Topshop mannequins even before Topshop opened their first store here), later I found out because it was vintage.
So here I am at the Soundrenaline Festival, bringing my writing from my own room in my apartment, out for a little field work: observing and collecting examples from the natural environment, and also bring myself back into the nostalgic phase of my high school life. For the past few years, the festival brought in Temper Trap, Bloc Party, MEW, Jet, Limp Bizkit, and some biggest local indie bands from my high school throwback playlist. The genres are varied and these artists performed in 4 different stages: pop, punk rock / metal, electronic, and acoustic / folk. Here are the situation up there among the cliffs and thousands of audiences, with some intriguing street styles I managed to capture.
“Some people wear the most comfy T-shirt with their favorite band logo printed on it, others go the extra miles to dress up because for them, dressing up IS their form of 'band t-shirt', to show the world their excellent taste and personality.”
There are no do's and don'ts of what to wear during festivals, usually some people wear the most comfy T-shirt with their favorite band logo printed on it to stay all day in the sun, others go the extra miles to dress up because for them, dressing up IS their form of 'band t-shirt', to show the world their excellent taste and personality. I tried to stay in the exact center between being me (clue: preppy with a drop of ratchet) and not going home in the middle of the day out of discomfort, so this is what I wore.
”I tried to stay in balance of being comfortable and being 'me': preppy with a drop of ratchet, so I wore a blazing red swimsuit with chic ruffles, and 70's inspired high-waist, bell bottom blue denim jeans to get everything I needed in an outfit: simplicity, nostalgic feelings, and color block for attention.”
Summary of wearing swimsuit as normal clothes for 2 whole day, in my experience:+ ultra chic+ it supports and shapes your body perfectly, no bra needed+ weather resistant
+ it's also sweat resistant in this climate
- straight up bad idea if you need to pee in one of those sad plastic toilet cubicle (thankfully this venue came with a decent indoor toilets. So please do some research for the good of your well being!!!)
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For day two, I wore another swimsuit, this time paired with a thrift checkered blazer I found in Poland for just $3, and a vintage leather skirt I found in Tokyo for around $10.
I call this look 'a clueless, pretty woman', because I literally reconstructed the two cult movies in one outfit.
Stealing Dionne from Clueless's checkered blazer and Vivian's Pretty Woman's 80's inspired cut-out bodycon for my all-time favorite classy / trashy fusion look.
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Now let's talk about the venue and performers. What I love about it is that it seems like they seriously wanted to set the right mood, for it to NOT just held in a normal stadion area. This festival took place at Garuda Wisnu Kencana, a huge national park with picturesque cliffs landscape, in Bali. Outside of stages, we also had camping area. The camp is dedicated for selected artists and creators as a networking space, and also you get to unlock other features like movie screenings, art workshops, and other neat artsy experiences outside of the music concert itself. There were also art installations made by local artists, spread all over the venue. Not to mention the open bar area, epic experience overall. Here is what it looked like on sunset hours.
The performers wisely matched the outfits according to Bali's humid climate. The folk duo couple Endah n Rhesa, looked cute twinning in black and khaki outfits, meanwhile retro-jazz band Mocca showed up in a 60's inspired mod pink stripes dress set. My favorite performer style would be Zee Avi, the Malaysian folk singer - songwriter. She had sparkly glitters on her forehead and flowers on the braid, showing up to the audience asking their opinions if her flower braids look cute.
And there goes my full field report of the whole festival. It seems like when it comes to music festivals, everyone I saw was clever enough to count the risk and return of dressing up, after all no outfits are worth the blisters or sprained ankles. Thinking of the middle ground of dressing up fun and *safely*, Zee Avi's embroidered boots she matched with her Tenun Ikat fabric would be the perfect example. Now that we're Instagram friends thanks to Soundrenaline, let me DM her asking where she get that. 👀
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