BerBeda Beginnings

BerBeda can be broken down into four influences.

1.

Think hot and humid Indonesian days spent traversing through cities, jungles, beaches, and forests. 

Three months with all your belongings in one backpack. 

This was me in the fall of '19. And very quickly I realized that my wardrobe, in layman's terms, was complete ass. 

This can get wet, this can't. This will dry quickly, this won't. This makes me look like an oompa loompa, this doesn't. 

I could never find a harmonious combination of functionality and style. 

2.

Aside from my many fond memories, there is one of potent plastic burning into the sky and infesting my nose. In certain areas, trash fires were a common sight on the side of the road, just as plastic was in the ocean and along the shores. 

Indonesia made it clear that you can not separate the environment and people, if you kill the environment then you kill the people.

In the U.S. we like to believe plastic is harmless if it gets put in a blue bin. The reality is less than 9% of recycled plastic has actually been recycled. Regardless of where the waste ends up, all our livelihoods are threatened by the degradation of our environment. 

3.

Most impressionable are the Indonesian families with whom I lived with and welcomed me in as their own.

The genuine happiness they radiated daily, despite not having air pods, air conditioning, or other luxuries, forced me to address my delusional perception of modernization and fulfillment. I will always remember the moment when I told them the sales price of an iPhone X. I was in the minor city Jogjakarta at the time and there, it is enough to feed an adult for 333 days, three meals a day. 

Having such resource at my disposal, like technology, access to education, and capital, I wanted to make the most of it.  

4.

Pair these experiences with my unexpected love for Batik, a traditional Indonesian art form, and now you have the blueprint for what has become...

BerBeda