Mira Pranoto, Dreaming as Big as Karl Lagerfeld
The photos of her fashion design collection which was shown on prestigious fashion show, Jakarta Fashion Week 2016, has gone viral on social media. This situation makes her feel proud since it proves that her designs are acknowledged and will be remembered among Indonesia fashion designers. Mira Pranoto, a student of Fashion Management at Binus Northumbria School of Design (BNSD) class of 2017, is making her way as a fashion designer, an ambition to be compared with Karl Lagerfeld.
Mira Pranoto had the opportunity to exhibit her designs at Jakarta Fashion Week alongside other ten students after eliminating other 25 candidates within her class. She was chosen among the BNSD representatives by the panelists which consists of BNSD’s fashion lecturers, because she has creativity, authenticity as well as fresh and unique ideas. During the show, she chose “P.(E).RANG” as her theme due to its connection with Flores as the main idea for the design of BNSD designers. While the others chose traditional dancing or the panorama of Flores as the background of their designs, Mira was inspired by Ngada Tribe war ritual which she implemented on her five fashion designs. The color of black becomes the signature of her collection along with the hexagonal accent on certain areas.
“The hexagonal accent was actually inspired from the Komodo dragon’s skin shape. Its skin resembles a close-up dragon with hexagonal scale,” said Mira who is also talented in singing and participated in 1st Asian Choir Games. She added that she used scuba, neoprene and leather as the materials. She then combined it with other materials, yet she didn’t use all the artificial materials so the design can be more natural. In addition, she uses stick as an accessory which distinguished her from the other designers and became the only student designers who doesn’t use bag as an accessory.
“The reason I’m not using bag as an accessory is simply because I want people to remember my collection. Throughout the years, fashion shows are drab – a model on the catwalk, bring the bags and make a pose. That’s it. People only see the pattern of the design, nothing more and nothing less. Therefore, I want to make my collection memorable and people can remember my collection based on the accessory. It’s already proven on the social media, based on the hashtags about Binus during the last year event which used photos of my collection,” said Mira who just finished her internship as Assistant Designer at Butik Sebastian Gunawan.
Her passion in fashion design has started since she was a child because she often saw her mother sew and designed pattern for her dresses. “My mother used her own hand to make my dresses. I saw how she sew and draw the pattern for the dress and I liked watching it. That was the time when I decided that someday I will make beautiful dress for her,” she recalled. When she was in high school, she started to have an interest in drawing and she eventually continued her study at Binus Northumbria School of Design, which she believes as the best fashion design school and best for her to understand fashion industry.
“To turn all of my dreams into reality I studied at the best fashion school in Jakarta, Binus Northumbria School of Design which is a part of Bina Nusantara International University. And becoming the representative of BNSD in Jakarta Fashion Week 2016 is another great step for me to fulfill my dreams. I can only thank Binus University for their support so I can do the things that I’m doing now,” said Mira who idolizes Karl Lagerfeld.
Even in such young age, she is fully aware that the most precious lesson in order to be successful is a failure. She recalls her experience when she failed to make a fashion illustration for a well-known fashion magazine. “I was so inexperienced back then and the result wasn’t good enough. The lecturers, and even myself, were not satisfied with my work,” she said. However, that failure didn’t let her down as she viewed it as a positive thing instead. “A failure can be the greatest teacher for us so we can learn a thing or two to become more successful in the future. If we never know how it feels to fail, it can lead into a complacency. I think that fashion is similar with gambling, because it’s so difficult to predict how long our products will exist in the market. If our products can’t survive long enough, it means that they will be difficult to sell,” she explains.
Now, Mira sets an even higher dream – to be one of the best fashion designers in Indonesia and worldwide. Mira always have faith in strong work ethic because she believes those things can make her successful and make her dreams come true. “In building a career as fashion designer or a fashion entrepreneur, the most important thing is we have to pay attention to details. This business demands every little things to be perfect because every fashion designer want their design to look pretty and fabulous. We also have to keep creating innovation and never give up,” she concluded.
Mira Pranoto’s Collection
