The Indonesian label Hollywood wears, copiers chase

Peggy Hartanto once stood in front of a mannequin at her favorite Surabaya mall and cried. The dress on display was an exact copy of one of her own designs, placed at the front of the store as if the label had earned it. More than a decade later, the brand that bears her name dresses Hollywood and stocks in more than a dozen markets — and the copies have never stopped coming. Her story tracks a wider shift. Consumers across Asia now care less about logos and more about quality and cultural identity, and Indonesian designers, long absent from the fashion capitals’ rosters, are among those filling the gap. Founded in Surabaya in 2012 by sisters Peggy, Petty and Lydia Hartanto, with Peggy as creative director, PEGGY HARTANTO has been worn by Beyoncé, Gigi Hadid, Demi Lovato and Gwen Stefani, and in November 2025 released a capsule collection with Universal Products & Experiences tied to “Wicked: For Good.” The brand built its name on sculptural silhouettes, but it no longer sells clothing alone. Leather goods, launched in 2023, have found a large audience on TikTok in Indonesia, extending the label past its ready-to-wear base. Success has a cost. Accessible pricing has made designer leather goods from Asian labels popular with younger shoppers — and a target: copies of PEGGY HARTANTO designs circulate widely on e-commerce platforms. Shoppers across Asia are growing more exacting about quality. Bluebell Group’s “Asia Lifestyle Consumer Profile,” run annually since 2021, describes a consumer base that increasingly expects brands to justify prices through product quality and performance; in the 2025 edition, 86% of Southeast Asian respondents associated luxury with workmanship over brand or design. Statista puts Southeast Asia’s’s luxury goods revenue at $18.4 billion in 2025, and Bain & Company found the market grew 6% annually over the past decade — faster than most mature luxury regions. Building a brand out of Surabaya has meant finding the right partners, fending off copycats, upgrading operations and holding onto a design identity — the terrain the Hartanto sisters map out below. Jing Daily: Take me back to the beginning. What stood in your way, and how did you get around it? Peggy Hartanto: I returned to Surabaya in 2012 after studying fashion design in Sydney and a year at Collette Dinnigan. My dream was to build a ready-to-wear occasionwear brand, something Surabaya had never really seen. At the time, occasionwear meant a custom dress from a tailor, copied straight from a magazine. At the end of 2012, I was invited to show at Jakarta Fashion Week as a Raffles College of Design and Commerce alumna. That was our debut, 10 looks under the PEGGY HARTANTO label. The aesthetic, shaped by my Australian training, was minimalist, effortless, and chic. That show connected us with fashion media and stylists for the first time. Petty Hartanto: We grew up in a family business environment, so supporting each other came naturally. Each of us found our own role organically. I took charge of branding and visuals, and Lydia handled the website and communications. Lydia Hartanto: We doubted the aesthetic would click in Indonesia, so we focused on introducing the brand abroad instead. That strategy paid off. Hollywood celebrities wore PEGGY HARTANTO on red carpets and TV, a milestone for an Indonesian label. Local media and consumers took notice. Soon after, our collection hit Indonesian stores and we gained our first international retailer in Singapore, In our third year, we started showing at Paris Fashion Week showrooms, introducing the brand to a wider audience. We returned every season, building relationships with retailers along the way. Every chapter had its own set of challenges. We built a fashion label without a blueprint. Peggy had the design training, but the rest of us had no business background. So, we learned from books and trial and error. Paris demanded commitment, season after season, and for a young independent brand, that was no small feat. But we showed up anyway, believing consistency was the only path to trust. Every hurdle and constraint became (integrated) part of the journey, and we are still learning as we go. JD: Where do you see the label in the medium to long term, and how do you get there? Lydia: Our long-term goal is to build a brand that stands the test of time, not just in Indonesia but globally. We want to be known and trusted by women across regions for decades to come. On that front, the medium-term work is about expansion. Ready-to-wear is still our foundation, but leather goods, which we launched in 2023, are growing fast. More categories will follow, all designed for the women we serve. Our clients have grown alongside us. The young ladies who wore PEGGY HARTANTO on first dates are now mothers. Graduation clients are now career women. We hope to stay with them through every milestone. JD: How does being an Indonesian label shape how you’re perceived at home and abroad? Has that changed in recent years? Lydia: At home, the journey has been about earning trust, slowly. Indonesian brands used to take a backseat in retail. That has shifted. Appreciation for local labels has grown, and we now stand alongside international names. Petty: Being Indonesian abroad places us within a larger narrative of contemporary creativity from the region. Curiosity about modern Indonesian design is growing, and we are grateful to be part of that story. Increasingly, international audiences judge the brand on its own terms. The conversation is less about origin and more about design language and craftsmanship. Our Indonesian identity matters, but it has never been the headline. JD: Describe the moment you discovered you had been copied. What did you feel? Peggy: “Unseen,” our first collection, took off in Indonesia, and soon, copies appeared everywhere. We saw them on Instagram. As a young designer, it brought mixed feelings. First, disbelief. We told ourselves it could be coincidence, or just a trend. When it kept happening, sometimes multiple styles … the discomfort grew. In hindsight, I recognize it as grief, and fear. Each design took days, sometimes weeks, of research, trials, and sitting with the work before it ever saw the light. Then the questions came and the doubts crept in. What if people cannot recognize it as ours? What if clients prefer the cheaper copy? What if the copy outshines the original? Before any public response, we sit with it. We ask why. Does this brand have a history with similar designs? What is their point of view? If we find no connection and it is an exact copy, we reach out directly. That was not always the case. Early on, I saw an exact copy of our dress on a mannequin display at the front of a store in our favorite Surabaya mall. I stood there and cried. JD: How do you personally draw the line between ‘inspired by’ and theft? Has watching it happen to you moved that line? Petty: Inspiration allows for transformation. Artists draw from other work, but they add something of themselves. As a creative, you can usually feel when that line is honest. Theft, however, lacks that element. The act takes a specific detail, one tied to a distinct creative process, and reproduces it without adding anything new. We cannot control copying. We have accepted that. What we can control is how we respond and what we can take away. So we tell our story, share our process, and show our references. JD: Have you seen customers pick the copy over the original on price? Lydia: Yes, we have seen it openly. And we get it. Price and accessibility matter. We follow the online conversations closely. When this happens, our golden rule remains to control what we can control. We make sure our clients feel the value, the thought, the love, the devoted hard work and the story behind each piece. JD: Did you ever take legal action? What did it teach you about IP protection for independent designers across borders — real, or theoretical? Lydia: We consulted IP lawyers. What we learned is that protection [for independent designers] takes resources, time, and money. The legal framework is there, but enforcement, particularly for contemporary fashion, is slow and rarely matches the speed of the market. JD: Does being copied mean you have made it? Peggy: It does offer some comfort, and there is truth in it. But honestly, that thinking is incomplete and it is not the full picture. Being copied carries a fear that the “imitation is flattery” line does not address. And that saying shuts down the conversation. We may have made it. But we have also been copied. Both truths can coexist, and the problem persists. JD: You’ve spoken about organic growth over rapid scale, yet you now stock more than a dozen markets — Heilongjiang, Doha, New York among them. Where does organic end and inorganic begin? Lydia: Organic growth means growing within our means, effort and finances. It may seem slow, but we value full control. We have to believe in what we deliver, and we have to love it before it reaches anyone else. We approach growth like planting seeds and growing healthy roots, because that is how any real and lasting growth happens. JD: When demand outran your production and logistics capacity, how did you manage saying no — or slowing down — without damaging retail relationships? Lydia: We faced this recently with our leather goods in Indonesia. The handbag drop outpaced our plans. So we made a brave choice. We limited purchases temporarily to keep it fair. Then we opened strategic pre-orders to meet demand without lowering our standards. Communication is everything with our retailers and clients. Transparency about the situation and the reasons behind it helped us solve problems together. JD: Lydia has spoken about building a global brand from Southeast Asia with no roadmap. Looking back, which bets made a difference — Paris, PR, others — and which didn't? Knowing what you know now, what would you do differently? Lydia: In hindsight, every key decision shaped a different chapter. Early on, with no recognition yet, signing a PR agency was a big investment. But it paid off. It amplified our brand conversation when our own platform could not. Once production and sourcing were in place, showing in Paris was a key move. It built trust with retailers. We showed every season, consistently, and that credibility opened doors. Knowing what I know now, I would trust ourselves sooner. We would move faster. Fear and hesitation slowed us down early on, before we had proven anything. JD: A sculptural silhouette lands differently in Kuwait, Tokyo and Copenhagen. Do you tailor collections per region, or stay consistent and let the customer come to you? Has any market pushed back on something central enough to make you rethink? Petty: We keep our design language consistent across markets. The aesthetic, story, and identity stay the same. We connect with women everywhere as ourselves. Peggy: We adjust the technical side. Torso sizing, for instance, differs between Europe and Indonesia, calibrated per market, because body proportions differ. We want the garment to fit, flatter and the woman to feel good in it. Lydia: Another example, in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia we adjust dress lengths based on retailer feedback, keeping the design intact. When a suggestion does not align with our intent, we talk it through and share our perspective. JD: Brands from Southeast Asia are gaining visibility without the infrastructure of a fashion capital — buyer networks, trade shows, press relationships. What would help more labels break through: government support, regional collaboration, something else? And do you see yourselves playing a part? Lydia: Global recognition takes collective effort, whether for a country or region. Having been in this industry for a while, we know that Indonesian brands face layered challenges, from infrastructure, market access, visibility, to support systems. Recognition is stronger when you arrive as part of a larger force, and this requires a critical mass of strong brands. In Paris, the showrooms that win retailer attention are those with a collectively strong roster. Government support is key to building that critical mass, funding and policies that prioritize the creative industry. We saw this firsthand through Indonesia Fashion Forward, a Jakarta Fashion Week and government initiative. The mentorship and showrooms it provided opened international doors for us. Alongside, connections between designers matter just as much, sharing knowledge, networks, and resources. We aim to be part of building that infrastructure, and we trust our journey, at the very least, paves the way for the next one.

The Indonesian label Hollywood wears, copiers chase

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The Indonesian label Hollywood wears, copiers chase

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