At a glance:

• 2018  the year Viknes won MVP at Honda DBL DI Yogyakarta
• 2024  his international modeling debut at Milan Men's Fashion Week
• 4 major houses he walked for during Paris Fashion Week 2026: Jacquemus, Yohji Yamamoto, Junya Watanabe, Officine Générale
• 29 June 2026  the date he closed a look for Jacquemus's "Le Bonheur" show on the cliffs of Corsica

Viknes Waren Mahaputra is a 25-year-old Indonesian model, born in Lampung in 2000, who walked the Jacquemus Spring/Summer 2027 runway on June 29, 2026, at the Phare de la Pietra lighthouse in Île-Rousse, Corsica. He shared the lineup with Imaan Hammam, Isabelle Huppert, and actor Park Seo-joon. Before any of that, he was a point guard at SMA Budi Mulia 2 Yogyakarta.

That basketball-to-Paris pipeline is the whole story here, and it's a genuinely strange one.

How did a basketball player from Yogyakarta end up on the Jacquemus runaway ?

Back in 2017 and 2018, Viknes played for his school in Honda DBL DI Yogyakarta, the biggest high school basketball league in the country. He was named MVP of the 2018 season. Then, instead of chasing a pro basketball path, he moved to France for university  a decision that quietly rerouted his entire life.

His height and bone structure caught attention almost by accident. Local designers gave him his first bookings in Indonesia. From there, things moved fast: his international debut came at Milan Men's Fashion Week in 2024, walking for Neil Barrett's Spring/Summer 2024 collection, followed by bookings with JordanLuca and Zegna.

By January 2026, Jacquemus had already put him in a brown suit with an unusual folded collar for its "Le Palmier" presentation. Six months later, he was back  this time closing out "Le Bonheur," a collection Simon Porte Jacquemus built around childhood memories of Corsica with his mother.

The show itself leaned into that nostalgia. Think salt air, bare rock cliffs, and a lighthouse as a runway backdrop instead of a black-box venue. Viknes walked in a yellow shirt under a turquoise blazer, baggy trousers, a brown leather tote, and blue loafers — a palette that felt more like a Mediterranean holiday than a fashion week.

The same week, he also walked for Yohji Yamamoto, Auralee Tokyo, and Junya Watanabe  and got to meet Yamamoto in person.

"It was an honor. Thank you so much."  Viknes Waren, on meeting designer Yohji Yamamoto backstage in Paris

What most coverage skips: Viknes isn't only a model. He's now based in Bali and paints in a pop-urban style, showing work through Blue Monster Gallery, moving between canvas, fabric, and even tattoo art. For someone whose career started on a hardwood court, that's a fairly wide swing.

For DBL Indonesia, his trajectory has become a talking point of its own  proof that a student-athlete background can translate into an entirely different industry, on an entirely different continent.