From Borneo to Papua New Guinea: Yulia Hadi brings the powerful story of Pandawi to PNG Fashion Week 2026

When Indonesian designer and entrepreneur Yulia Hadi presents Pandawi at Papua New Guinea Fashion Week 2026, she will bring far more than a collection to the runway.

She will bring the colours and traditions of Borneo, the enduring bond between five sisters, and the story of a woman who transformed hardship into purpose. Her presentation will be an expression of cultural pride, feminine strength and the profound belief that the stories we inherit deserve to be carried forward.

Born on the island of Borneo, Indonesia, Yulia grew up surrounded by a culture rich in tradition, community and connection to the natural world. It was a place where identity was not simply spoken about; it was expressed through food, textiles, craftsmanship, ceremony and everyday life.

Borneo remains the foundation of Yulia’s creative identity. Its beauty, complexity and resilience continue to shape the way she sees the world and the way she approaches fashion.

At the centre of that identity is family.

Yulia is the eldest of five sisters, and it is from this relationship that the name Pandawi was born. Meaning “five sisters of Borneo”, Pandawi is a tribute to the women who shaped her life and to the strength that exists when women stand together.

The name carries love, memory and responsibility. It represents sisterhood not as a fashionable idea, but as a lived experience: a source of belonging, endurance and hope.

“Pandawi is more than a boutique,” Yulia says. “It is a tribute.”

A childhood shaped by responsibility

Behind the beauty of Pandawi is a deeply personal story.

Yulia’s childhood was marked by discipline, hardship and responsibility from an extraordinarily young age. Her father was an adventurer and explorer who raised her to be tough and self-reliant, often through harsh and violent discipline.

From the age of five, Yulia would wake at 4 a.m. to work on the family farm before going to school. While other children played, much of her childhood was consumed by work and survival.

Her mother, whom Yulia remembers as gentle and devoted, did everything she could to care for her daughters. Her warmth created an important counterpoint to the severity of Yulia’s early experiences and would later inspire another significant part of Yulia’s entrepreneurial journey.

As a young girl, Yulia dreamed of becoming a doctor. That ambition was born from tragedy. She lost an older sister at only seven years of age because her sister was unable to receive the medical care she needed.

The loss remained with Yulia. It gave her an early understanding of inequality, vulnerability and the value of being able to help another person.

However, when her parents divorced, the needs of her family took priority. Yulia placed her own ambition aside and assumed the responsibilities expected of her as the eldest daughter.

Although she could not pursue medicine herself, the dream did not disappear completely. Years later, Yulia helped her youngest sister obtain the education she needed to become a doctor.

It remains one of her proudest achievements.

Through her sister, a piece of Yulia’s childhood dream was fulfilled. It is a powerful reflection of the philosophy that now runs through Pandawi: one woman’s progress can create a pathway for another.

Carrying Borneo across the world

Twenty years ago, Yulia moved to Australia and began the complex process of building a new life away from the island that had formed her.

Migration required adaptation, but it did not require the abandonment of identity. Yulia carried Borneo with her—in its colours, flavours, customs, stories and values.

Rather than allowing distance to weaken her relationship with her culture, she turned that relationship into a creative and entrepreneurial foundation.

Pandawi emerged as a bridge between Yulia’s past and her future. Through the brand, Indonesian heritage could be preserved while being presented to new audiences. Fashion became a language through which she could speak about Borneo, honour its cultural artistry and encourage others to recognise the power within their own origins.

Every Pandawi piece is intended to carry identity. The brand draws its spirit from the textiles, craftsmanship, symbolism and cultural richness of Indonesia, particularly Borneo. Its designs are not conceived merely as garments or objects of beauty, but as vessels through which heritage can move across borders and generations.

This distinction is important to Yulia.

In a global industry often driven by speed and constant reinvention, Pandawi looks to memory, meaning and continuity. It values the knowledge held by artisans and cultural custodians. It recognises traditional techniques not as relics of the past, but as living forms of intelligence that deserve to be respected, sustained and seen.

Pandawi’s commitment to ethical craftsmanship reflects this philosophy. It seeks to value the people behind the work, support responsible production and contribute to the continuation of cultural practices.

For Yulia, preserving heritage also requires ensuring that the hands and communities carrying that heritage are recognised.

Turning survival into purpose

Yulia’s journey in Australia was not without further hardship. She is a survivor of domestic and family violence—an experience that demanded enormous courage to overcome.

Yet she refused to allow violence to become the final definition of her life.

She chose to rebuild. She chose to speak. She chose to believe that her future could be larger than what had happened to her.

Pandawi grew from that decision.

The brand is therefore inseparable from Yulia’s experience of resilience. It was not created from privilege or ease, but through the determination of a woman who understood what it meant to begin again.

Rather than concealing the more difficult parts of her story, Yulia has transformed them into a source of solidarity. Her openness is not an invitation to view her only through the lens of adversity. It is an assertion of agency—a declaration that painful experiences can be acknowledged without being permitted to control the future.

“My story is proof that your past does not define your future,” she says. “If I can turn my challenges into purpose, so can you.”

This philosophy informs Pandawi’s vision of empowerment. It is not empowerment reduced to a slogan. It is the work of rising, healing, creating and reclaiming one’s identity.

Pandawi speaks to women who have had to rebuild themselves. It speaks to women carrying family responsibilities, women separated from their homelands and women learning to see their own histories as sources of power rather than limitations.

A creative life built around culture

Yulia’s commitment to Indonesian culture extends beyond fashion.

She is also the owner of two Indonesian restaurants, both dedicated to her mother. Through food, she honours the woman whose cooking carried the feeling of home.

Fashion and food may occupy different creative worlds, but within Yulia’s life they share the same purpose. Both are forms of cultural memory. Both create opportunities for people to encounter Indonesia through colour, texture, flavour and story.

Her restaurants and her fashion brand demonstrate the breadth of her entrepreneurship, but they also reveal something more personal: Yulia builds businesses around belonging.

Each venture preserves a connection to family. Each allows Indonesian culture to be shared with people who may never have experienced it before. Each ensures that the traditions she carried to Australia remain alive, visible and valued.

A natural connection with Papua New Guinea

Yulia’s participation in PNG Fashion Week 2026 creates an important cultural conversation between Indonesia, Australia and Papua New Guinea.

Papua New Guinea and Indonesia are neighbours with extraordinary cultural diversity, deep artistic traditions and communities whose identities remain closely connected to land, ancestry and collective memory. Although every culture is distinct and must be represented with integrity, there is a shared understanding across the region that textiles, adornment, art and ceremony carry meaning far beyond aesthetics.

This makes PNG Fashion Week an especially meaningful platform for Pandawi.

PNG Fashion Week is not simply presenting fashion as spectacle. It is creating a meeting place for cultures, designers and creative industries from Papua New Guinea, the Pacific and the wider international community. It gives designers the opportunity to celebrate where they come from while participating in a global conversation about contemporary identity.

For Yulia, walking into this space means bringing Borneo into dialogue with Papua New Guinea.

Her presence speaks to the possibilities created when culturally grounded designers meet across borders—not to blur their differences, but to recognise and learn from them. It is a celebration of nations and communities telling their own stories through their own creative voices.

At APEC Haus in Port Moresby on 18 and 19 September, PNG Fashion Week audiences will encounter a designer whose work embodies the event’s defining message: the future of culture depends on our willingness to carry it forward.

Fashion as an act of cultural leadership

Pandawi rests upon seven defining values: heritage preservation, sisterhood and community, resilience and empowerment, authenticity and storytelling, ethical craftsmanship, cultural pride, and purpose-driven leadership.

Together, these principles position the brand beyond the conventional limits of fashion.

Pandawi is part archive, part testimony and part vision for the future. It honours inherited knowledge while asking how that knowledge can remain relevant and respected in a changing world.

Yulia’s leadership is grounded in lived experience. She understands responsibility because she carried it as a child. She understands sacrifice because she placed her family’s needs before her own. She understands displacement because she rebuilt her life in another country. She understands resilience because she survived experiences intended to diminish her.

Those realities give weight to the clothes and stories she now presents.

For Yulia, cultural pride is an active responsibility. It requires people to speak about their heritage, support its makers and reject the idea that international recognition should only arrive after a culture has been interpreted by someone else.

Her message is direct:

“Be proud of your heritage. Be proud of your island. Be proud of your culture.”

She describes Indonesia as an extraordinary nation stretching from Sabang to Merauke, encompassing thousands of islands, languages, traditions and stories. Its cultural wealth is immense, and Yulia believes Indonesians themselves must be among its strongest advocates.

“We don’t need to wait for others to tell our story,” she says. “We are the storytellers. We are the culture-bearers. We are Indonesia.”

The woman behind the collection

When Yulia Hadi steps onto the PNG Fashion Week platform, audiences will see a designer, restaurateur and businesswoman. Behind those achievements, however, stands the eldest of five sisters: a daughter of Borneo who began working before sunrise at five years old, a girl who once dreamed of becoming a doctor, a migrant who carried home across an ocean, and a survivor who rebuilt her life with courage.

Pandawi brings each of those identities together.

Its story is intimate, but its message is universal. It asks people to recognise that heritage is not something to leave behind in order to move forward. It can be the very foundation from which a stronger future is built.

Yulia Hadi’s arrival in Papua New Guinea will therefore represent more than an international designer joining a runway calendar. It will be a meeting of stories, islands and cultures. It will be an affirmation of the strength of women and the communities they carry with them.

Above all, it will remind audiences that fashion reaches its greatest power when it allows people to be seen—not only for what they create, but for who they are, what they have survived and what they have chosen to preserve.

From Borneo to Australia and now to Papua New Guinea, Yulia Hadi is carrying her heritage forward.

Through Pandawi, she is ensuring that the five sisters of Borneo walk with her.