our story

Aditya W. Harsono, Founder and CEO of Buttersoupandfrozencustard, is an Indonesian native but a world transplant.

From a young age, he was always obsessed with abstract art and grunge music, dreaming of one day being an artist or musician.

At 14 he moved from Indonesia to Malaysia to continue and finish schooling. Then it was on to Australia to begin a new life again at university, after a few years at ECU, Edith Cowan University, Aditya moved to America at 25 to broaden his horizons and finished studying his environmental sciences degree at Southwest Minnesota State University. He was still struggling with his addiction at the time. Semi-clean he was bargaining with himself thinking everything in moderation. His last year of college however he started using heavily again and was losing control.

Like so many wayward youths, his perspective on artists was “if I want to be a great artist or musician I need to take drugs and be so fucked on them in order to achieve piece of mind or to create great music or paintings, and this is so untrue”

In 2017, Aditya graduated and began working for a NGO in Minneapolis. Through out this time he was still using and shortly thereafter, he had to move on to chase a higher paying job as a tree specialist. Over the next few years, Aditya came to love the job but hated the management and bureaucracy within the company. Taking that knowledge he realised all he wanted to do, was make art and music. So he quit his job as a tree specialist and began following his dream. In the fall of 2019, Aditya had a breakdown and snapped feeling lost and realising that even this wasn’t what he really wanted to do.

 All through 2019 and 2020 Aditya was making music and art with his roommate, dedicating all his time to that.. and taking drugs. This kept on until he realised he was broke from spending all his money on drugs, again. He got a job doing “instacart”, which was keeping him afloat and enabled him to create his art and music. When covid hit, his workload increased as people weren’t able to shop for groceries in the same way that had pre-covid.

 Then on the 25th of may 2020 the George Floyd murder happened. Sparking something in the community and in Aditya, there were peaceful protests everywhere. Voices were speaking up and Aditya wanted to be one of them.

 October 2020 the idea of a clothing line came to him out of the blue, a way to share his art and help him spread the messages he was feeling needed to be shared in the world he was living in. It also seemed like a way to help the bi-poc community as he could share the profits.

Attending one of the peaceful protests, he was jailed for 20hours, and in that time had a lot of time to contemplate. During his ‘stay’ he was thinking about what would happen to him. What happened if he got deported?

He decided then that he needed to stop taking drugs and concentrate on the clothing line and his art. He made a resolution with himself that he was going to take his clothing line to the next level so that he can share his voice and the voice of the bi-poc community.

“You can jail the revolutionary, but you can’t jail the revolution”

May 2021, Aditya flew back to Indonesia to see his family and friends. It had been a long time almost three years since he had been home. He saw such glaring examples of the social and economic disparity. Poverty is a very real thing in Jakarta and the social gap, creates a less educated class resulting in huge environmental misuse and degradation. He realised that he could use his clothing line not only for the bi-poc community but help to spread awareness and education of the environment and help the people in his hometown and around the world to protect the planet he holds dear.

As a man of colour, and a man that’s travelled the world, Aditya realises that the racism felt and seen in his time in America. Isn’t something specific to one country and isn’t something that can’t be helped by funding resources and giving a voice to communities in need.

Combining Aditya’s love of the environment and his need to get the voices of the bi-poc community heard across the world, he hopes to fulfil his lifes' and companies mission statement.

To help humanity and care for the environment. Be conscientious and able to help others.

Aditya at a river cleanup with @riverrangerjakarta