SOUTHEAST ASIA'S BIGGEST ART MARKETS: SAME-SAME but DIFFERENT

Welcome to the Indonesian edition of that tantalizing creature, the Southeast Asian art fair. Art Jakarta has chosen for itself an October date - getting a jump ahead of Singapore (in January) and Manila (a month later.)

- LISA GUERRERO NAKPIL

In any three of this region's capitals, the plumage of the wonderfully eccentric art crowd are not so much different from one city to another. There are the ministers' and datuks' third or fourth wives, with white-gloved bodyguards carrying the requisite Hermes Birkins reverentially, the avid Yayoi Kusama fans, signaling their good taste with pumpkin-splashed hairbands and ballet slippers, the curators in head-to-toe Issey Miyake (Pleats Please), the art advisers and managers in Thom Browne, and of course, the gallerists in LV or Balenciaga, carefully dressed so as not to eclipse their clientele, even in the cleavage department. There are the famous dilettantes, local actors and supermodels, and the grandchildren of property moguls, dressed in expensive normcore. In between are the serious collectors in protective Uniqlo camouflage, who only hint at their net worth by the vintage Pateks and dazzling Richard Milles on their wrists. This year, Golden Goose Superstars and New Balance sneakers have been traded in for On Cloud, give or take a Loewe collab.