It was a bit of a no-brainer that Rosemary Stone, a fashion columnist for 26 years, would one day publish a book on fashion.A Spirited Butterfly-The history of Fashion, now in bookstores, took Stone three years to put together. And, as she told WomanWise, she enjoyed every minute of collating the information."I went into people's cupboards and old boxes under their beds to get some of the photos that you see in the book," she said with a laugh."I had to go back into the newspaper files for my old columns. I hadn't realised how many columns I had put out until then."The trained fashion designer who graduated from the renowned Central St Martin school of design in London, Stone said she was moved to write A Spirited Butterfly since only few people were familiar with the history of fashion in T&T."I have actually heard people say we have no fashion history here."
She traces the fashion history from the estates to the towns.
"A lot of people will be surprised to learn that back in the 1940s the Government supported fashion."T&T also had a thriving manufacturing industry in the 1930s, as detailed in Stone's book. She was ten years old when she first became aware of fashion."I clearly remember my mother (Lucia Farrell) standing, looking at herself in the long oval-shaped "wing" mirror.... in her dressing room of our Woodbrook home."She was getting ready to accompany my father to a fashionable high society wedding of the son and daughter of two important Trinidadian families-a Mahabir son was marrying a Roodal daughter.Stone's mom used to host the Joy of Craft show on television and it is from her mother's side of the family, she said, that she got her artistic ability."The dress Roodal wore was a copy of the one worn by then Princess Elizabeth when she married Prince Phillip at their wedding months earlier."When I got older I started drawing dresses and after I finished high school, my mother said 'you're going to learn fashion because all you do is draw dresses."
Getting into St Martin was harder than she imagined because of the prestige of the school."I don't know, I think that the people there were charmed by the bold Trini girl who drew coconut trees."Stone's first major gig was the Pink Ball fashion show in the 1961."It was held at the Queen's Park Hotel, which was very fashionable back then."She worked at Glamour Girl before teaming up with Wayne Berkeley for the Carnival Queen show.Stone now has a fashion exhibition on at the National Museum, where it will run until tomorrow. Designed by Richard Young, the exhibition also served as a launch of her book.Already, Stone has started work on her second book and wants it to serve as learning tool for fashion students at UTT."Since UTT started with the programme there has been no reference books." She hopes to take Spirited Butterfly to the Caribbean.At home though, she believes that there is still much to be done in the industry. "People need to start taking it seriously. It is time we get the industry running and rebuild factories."We have a fashion sense of our own."