gorgeous dresses

Working with ancestral textile craft techniques, Yuni Kristina depicts Java's trumtum motif. It covers a blue silk scarf, stamped by hand and embellished with batik. A symbol of awakening love, it refers to a queen who felt neglected when the king took a mistress. She took up batik, creating stars in the dark sky, stars that became her friends. The king was so impressed with her batik that he rediscovered his great love for his wife.

Blue jasmine blossoms take shape as an expression of Java's parang kembang kotak motif. By Yuni Kristina, this elegant scarf is crafted of shimmering silk. She hand-stamps the blue patterns on the ivory textile and adds red and black designs in batik.

Floral motifs evoke wine carnations that bloom on cool ecru silk. Peacocks fly amid the blossoms in a traditional Javanese design known as suwiri merak. Demonstrating her mastery of batik, Yuni Kristina creates a scarf of exquisite elegance.

Shimmering shades of blue and cream cover this elegant scarf. Yuni Kristina recreates the parang raja. One of many traditional batik motifs, it symbolizes the ancient Javanese kingdom in general. She stamps the blue patterns in pure silk and adds the red blossoms with the batik motif.

Balinese artisan Dayu Menuhari presents a gorgeous batik scarf diligently crafted by hand. "We don't do any printing or even stamping," she says, "but it's all hand painted and while that makes our production take longer, our products are purely hand-made." Butterflies flit across the rayon scarf's awe-inspiring design in porcelain and geranium hues, which includes a traditional parang pattern at both ends of the accessory. A parang is type of knife, and the use of a parang motif was once reserved solely for Javanese royalty. Fringe on both ends completes the vibrantly-colored wrap scarf.