A gown made of liquid-blue silk moved like it was still wet. That was the closing look at Elysian Currents, and it's the image most people in the room kept talking about after.

Credit : BRI JF3 Fashion Festival Communication

Elysian Currents: A Southeast Asian Fantasy in Couture is a runway presentation by AFDS (ASEAN Fashion Designers Showcase), staged as part of BRI JF3 Fashion Festival 2026. It ran on July 27, 2026, at the Fashion Tent, Summarecon Mall Kelapa Gading, in North Jakarta, as one segment inside the larger festival, which ran July 22–29, 2026 under the theme "Recrafted: Shaping the Future." Three designers presented: Thoulany Chanthalangsy from Laos, Indra Murak from Singapore, and Erjohn Dela Serna from the Philippines.

At a glance:

• Show date: July 27, 2026.
• Venue: Fashion Tent, Summarecon Mall Kelapa Gading, Jakarta Utara.
• Designers featured: 3, from Laos, Singapore, Philippines.
• Festival scale: 50+ designers and brands, running since 2004  this was its 23rd year.

Credit : BRI JF3 Fashion Festival Communication

What is Elysian Currents?

It's a three-act couture show, not a single collection. Thoulany Chanthalangsy opened with Lao textile motifs reworked into modern tailoring  heritage as structure, not decoration. Indra Murak followed with a collection built on enchanted-forest imagery: soft silhouettes, layered texture, the feeling of walking through a storybook illustration. Erjohn Dela Serna closed with "Liquid Reverie," sculptural gowns in midnight blue, silver, lavender, olive green, and blush pink, built around the idea of water and reflection.

Why did AFDS bring this show to Jakarta?
AFDS exists to connect ASEAN designers with each other and with bigger markets. Hayden Ng, who represents the showcase, put it simply at the event: the goal is to let ASEAN designers connect and collaborate, because the region works as one family.

"We work together, we are one family, we are ASEAN."  Hayden Ng, AFDS

That line matters more than it sounds. BRI JF3 2026 pulled in designers from France, South Korea, and across Southeast Asia, and Elysian Currents was Jakarta's most concentrated dose of purely Southeast Asian couture on that runway  no European or East Asian names in the lineup, just three ASEAN countries telling three different stories back to back.

Where does this fit inside BRI JF3 Fashion Festival 2026?
BRI JF3 is Indonesia's longest-running fashion festival, active since 2004 and run by Summarecon with backing from the DKI Jakarta Tourism and Creative Economy Agency and Indonesia's Ministry of Creative Economy. The 2026 edition opened July 22 with Jakarta Governor Pramono Anung and Tourism Minister Widiyanti Putri Wardhana both in attendance, and closed July 29 after showing work from more than 50 designers and brands across Indonesia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Europe.

What made Elysian Currents different from the rest of the festival?
Most JF3 segments group designers by country pavilion or by market focus commercial, ready-to-wear, emerging talent. Elysian Currents was built as narrative couture: three unrelated design languages sequenced to feel like one continuous story, from ancestral motif to fantasy forest to liquid future. That's closer to how a Paris couture week presentation is paced than a typical trade-show runway segment, which is a deliberate positioning move for AFDS as it pushes ASEAN couture toward international recognition.

The counterintuitive part: none of the three designers are Indonesian, yet the show became one of the most talked-about segments of an Indonesian festival  proof that JF3 is increasingly functioning as a regional stage, not a national one.