THE KEBAYA

There are two stories behind this traditional costume. The first one is that the word comes from the Arabic word abaya, which refers to a kind of clothing that opens in front. The other one claims that this kind of clothing was brought by portuguese explorers to Malay and Indonesia. At that time it was worn not only by Malay and Indonesian women, but also by Chinese women. That's how we got the term kebaya encim.

From then on, the kebaya has been part of Indonesian fashion style.