fashion

SENSE OF STYLE
By DZREENA MAHADZIR

When the going gets tough, keep looking for the diamonds among the cubic zirconia.

I LOVE the Christmas season as it just puts everyone in a happy mood. And don’t we all need a little sunshine to wrap up this year.

I can’t say this has been a great year; there’ve been too many deaths and too much destruction, and the state of the economy hasn’t helped either. Still, you’ve got to take the bitter with the better (I’m so full of cliches) and keep looking for the diamonds among the cubic zirconia.

I spent the recent long weekend in Jakarta, which has always been a favourite city for shopping. I love the high-end glam factor, the edginess and the fashion-forward choices on offer.

Jakarta is beautiful and over-the-top, but all that is balanced by the reality of stark poverty. On one end of the spectrum are high rise buildings and never-ending shopping malls where you’re surrounded by gorgeous things, but it’s also hard to ignore the fact that any one of those things could keep starvation at bay for a poor family for an entire year. Neither is it easy to block out the street peddlers knocking on car windows trying to sell IKEA catalogues.

This city of contradictions saw me over-shopping as usual. I spent my first day there in the Christian Louboutin boutique at Grand Indonesia, and got frazzled when I couldn’t find my size and colour choice. Despite that, I must say that the Louboutins in Jakarta are more glamorous and have higher heels than those available in Singapore. So if you’re looking for that extra lift, you know where to get it.

I then hopped over to On Pedder and while discussing the merits of the red sole, I was told that the youngest Louboutin customer in the city was an 11-year-old. Seriously.

If you’re thinking of visiting Jakarta, now would be a good time to go. The entire city is on sale (but as I said in this column after my last trip earlier this year, there seems to be a permanent sale going on there).

So after having a good time blowing my budget, I met up with an old friend. This Indonesian friend is married to an American writer/film producer/photographer. Her story is interesting but sad; her father was imprisoned for 14 years for his political beliefs and I cannot imagine what it must have been like for her and her family.

The moment I got in the car and enquired about her husband who was abroad, I was told that he had been arrested the day before in a foreign country and interrogated for hours. All because he wanted to do a documentary on human rights in a country that doesn’t recognise any.

This wasn’t something new to them though – he had been arrested, tortured and imprisoned several times before.

It is when I hear stories like these that I am reminded there should always be a balance in life. Something in between the beautiful and divine escapist world where children wear Christian Louboutins and carry Chanel handbags, and the harsh and vivid reality of an oppressive and unfair system that sparks off a chain reaction of suffering and human misery. One chooses one’s own battles in this world, be it finding the perfect Louboutins or ensuring that basic human rights exist for all. It’s nice to have those who believe in the latter within your circle, to remind you why there’s more to life than pretty things and pretty people.

Jakarta always speaks to me in a way no where else manages to. I may not want to live there, I can’t stand the traffic jams, but I always find the perfect balance of glimmer and dust.

Next year, let’s all look to maintaining that balance. To quote one of my favourite authors, Agatha Christie: “I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”

Merry Christmas and have a happy and fabulous New Year!