It’s not easy to describe Ina Binandari in a single word. Not because there are no words to describe her, but because there are way too many. She worked at Pasaraya Store when the department store was on its heyday, then moved to one of the largest textile companies, PT Texmaco Jaya. She became a lecturer at Raffles Institute Indonesia and helped Elzatta and Dauky founder build the brand from scratch.

Ina Binandari’s first job in fashion industry was at Pasaraya Store in 1994. “People are not aware of differences in design major back then. They were looking for a designer to handle promotion and advertising and they thought fine arts was similar to graphic design. I said yes because I really wanted to get a job.” Thanks to her connection to design students during her university years, she learnt a lot of graphic design terms.

Shortly after, she was assigned to handle Japanese bookstore Maruzen under Pasaraya Store. Her responsibilities expanded. “I handled events, graphic design, public relation, marketing, data management, promotion planning, budgeting. I was doing things I’d never done before. I learned on the spot,” Ina commented.

There was also a brief stint at Danar Hadi after two years at Pasaraya Store. Danar Hadi is where she got in touch with many aspects of fashion from designing collection, producing samples and staging runway.

Jobs in fashion industry during that period is not as diverse as they are today. “People used to think that fashion designer handles everything from design to production, photoshoot, pricing, merchandising, runway, sales and marketing.”

Eager to learn more, she applied for fashion marketing at LaSalle Singapore. She returned to Indonesia in 1997 and took short course in export import to spend free time when she was pregnant with her first child.

In the midst of Southeast Asian financial crisis in 1998, she unexpectedly scored a job as creative designer at PT Texmaco Jaya, one the largest textile companies in Southeast Asia. At Texmaco, She learnt how to develop textile prints and travelled back and forth to Paris and New York to retrieve samples from Italian studios.

“I found out that it was common to buy samples of textile prints from European textile studio. It could cost up to 250 euros per design,” said Ina. Textile company in Indonesia then developed collection based on the samples.

Two years later, she was placed at Texmaco’s now-defunct in-house brand, Accent. “I learnt a lot about fabric construction. I became a merchandiser and I was responsible for finding the right materials for each garment.” She also got her hands on the business side of fashion from developing collections, working with designer and marketing the brand.

Eventually in 2004, she resigned from Accent and embarked on an academic career. She was hired as fashion business coordinator, head of programme and lecturer at LaSalle Idnonesia. “At the time, students didn’t know the differences between fashion business and fashion design. There were students who disliked drawing but were interested in fashion industry,” she explained.

“Fashion business is similar to general business study. You have to learn about finance, sales and management. The only difference is that in fashion business, you learnt fashion history and textiles.”

Her experience landed her an invitation to lead a fashion merchandising seminar for members of the Association of Indonesian Fashion Designers and Entrepreneurs/Asosiasi Perancang Pengusaha Mode Indonesia (APPMI) in 2008. During the seminar, the owner of Shafira, a Muslim fashion brand in Bandung, asked Ina to train her team. The training turned into full time job as general manager of merchandising at Shafira.

She went back to academic in 2009 despite attempts from Shafira CEO to stop her from resigning. “My resignation letter was ripped into pieces. The CEO said that I was the brain for her merchandising.” She lectured part time at Raffles Institute Indonesia, Universitas Tarumanegara, President University and UniSadhuGuna International College (UIC).

Another opportunity landed on her feet in 2012 when former director of Shafira ask for her help to create and develop a Muslim fashion brand called Elzatta. “I was asked to build the brand strategy. They only wanted to sell products. They didn’t want to be as big as Shafira because it was too complex. They asked me to make anything on trend and sell them fast.”

Contradictory to the founder’s wishes, Elzatta had an explosive growth and it has been registered under a holding company called Elcorps. Ina’s working schedule was adjusted from one day a week to four days a week, leaving only one day for teaching. While working at Elzatta, Ina wrote a book about hijab styling tutorial. Following the success of the first book, Gramedia published three more books. 

In 2013, Elzatta created a sister brand called Dauky. Ina became the brain and force behind Dauky. Her energy embodies Dauky as the youth version of Elzatta. She created the visual identity, oversaw operation, supervised designers and merchandisers.

Her skills and experience in fashion industry prove to be her most valuable assets. Although she is currently lecturing at design department of UIC, she’s still creating content for Dauky’s website. “I’m the one who asked them. If that website doesn’t have a blog or content about fashion, the sense of fashion will be gone.”  

When asked about why she chose academic over corporate, Ina said that her calling in life is sharing those knowledge that she earned on her long, hard-earned journey in the industry to people who want them. For Ina, teaching is the time for her to relax because the industry is too intense and rough.

“Personally for me, I find joy seeing someone with zero knowledge morphs into a person with abundant of knowledge. Sharing is happiness.”