"People think batik is traditional," Amirah says, pouring teh tarik in her Bangsar studio. "But batik was always experimental. The artisans in Kelantan were doing abstraction before abstraction had a name."
Amirah Yusof left a senior role at a multinational fashion conglomerate in Singapore to return to Kuala Lumpur in 2021. The move looked like a step backwards on paper. It was not. She founded Studio Kuali — named after the Malaysian wok, the vessel of intense heat and transformation — and began what she describes as "a two-year argument with batik."
The argument was about context. Batik in Malaysia had been relegated to formal occasions and tourist shops. Amirah wanted to put it on bodies in motion, in cities, in the everyday. Her first collection — 12 pieces, all hand-stamped batik in contemporary cuts — sold out in 48 hours via Instagram DM.
The Batik Coord Set and Kelantan Blouse in our current collection represent her third season. The fabric is hand-stamped by a collective of artisans in Kota Bharu whom Amirah works with directly, paying above-market rates and crediting by name.
"Fashion has a habit of stripping craft from its context," she says. "I'm trying to do the opposite — put the context back in."
The Batik Coord Set is available now. No two sets are identical.
