What in­trigues me, cease­less­ly, is the mis­ce­gena­tion, the melt­ing pot of in­flu­ences, which abounds in the Caribbean and more so in the south­ern Caribbean. It res­onates through an un­con­di­tion­al ap­pre­ci­a­tion of our plur­al bi­ogra­phies which im­pact on our fash­ion sen­si­bil­i­ties.

With the re­cent cel­e­bra­tions of Eid-ul-Fitr, I muse on our Asi­at­ic al­lure as out­fit­ted by the Mus­lim in­spired fash­ion of Na­bal­lah Chi. She cap­tures an Is­lam­ic mo­tif in dress style in­fused with her Caribbean as­sets to de­pict a mes­meris­ing tableau of New World style. She not on­ly caters to the five per cent Mus­lim na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty but beck­ons a Dubai-like re­ver­ber­a­tion which must make us pause and take no­tice.

A de­sign­er for just over three years, she is rel­a­tive­ly a new­com­er but brings a vi­bran­cy of per­son­al­i­ty and a lush colour palette to the re­gion­al fash­ion mo­sa­ic. “It’s get­ting to ap­pre­ci­ate what the fash­ion world has to of­fer. I love the pow­er of cloth­ing and the trans­for­ma­tive qual­i­ty it has. It’s what I’m meant to do” she posits cel­e­bra­to­ri­ly. Na­bal­lah Chi is an epony­mous la­bel which speaks vol­umes for her brand iden­ti­ty. “I’m at the cen­tre of my busi­ness and as the face of my own brand, I’m im­me­di­ate­ly recog­nised for my work. Any oth­er name wouldn’t suit­ably cap­ture the en­tire essence, vibe, and mes­sage of my brand. Noth­ing is more au­then­tic to me as my own giv­en name.”

Sur­pris­ing­ly, her in­flu­ences have a Dutch ori­gin. En­thralled by the Ghana­ian brand Vlis­co, with its Dutch colo­nial-era com­pa­ny stamp and en­cour­aged by the work of Suri­namese Mered­ith Jo­eroe­ja, she blends ab­stract print and bold colour to re­alise an un­mis­tak­able Na­bal­lah Chi Trin­bag­on­ian trade­mark. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, her re­gard for lo­cal de­sign­ers Mar­lon George of DAWW Cre­ations and Shaun Grif­fith Perez is man­i­fest in her styl­ized sil­hou­ettes and fas­tid­i­ous at­ten­tion to de­tail.

“My biggest fash­ion in­spi­ra­tion is any­one who is com­fort­able in their own skin. I look at every­thing that’s go­ing on in the world of fash­ion and in­te­grate them in­to my own work” she quips con­vinc­ing­ly for she be­lieves in the po­ten­tial and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of cre­ative en­tre­pre­neur­ship. “I would love to have my own brick and mor­tar store, a space that is a ‘to­tal’ ex­pe­ri­ence for cus­tomers. A place where you al­most ‘in­hale’ the brand and get a good feel for what I am try­ing to do, full im­mer­sion.”

With this hy­brid back­drop to her con­tri­bu­tion to our cre­ative cap­i­tal, I am heart­ened by her phi­los­o­phy and com­mit­ment. “The role of a cre­ative should be to en­rich the qual­i­ty of life, to pro­mote em­pow­er­ment, un­der­stand­ing and en­hance the eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty of com­mu­ni­ties. A cre­ative’s work is usu­al­ly seen as a by-prod­uct, but I be­lieve it is the very medi­um in which we live our lives.”

In­deed, she con­nect­ed with my ad­vo­ca­cy of a Caribbean aes­thet­ic, “I’m high­ly con­nect­ed to my Afro Caribbean cul­ture and her­itage so my line of work as a fash­ion de­sign­er al­ways re­flects this. There are many Caribbean de­sign­ers whose work fall in­to sim­i­lar cat­e­gories, yet each one of us has a unique nar­ra­tive, of­fer­ing a vivid ex­plo­ration of Caribbean fash­ion.”

There is ev­i­dent­ly an in­tel­li­gence em­bed­ded in the work of some of our young cre­atives. I salute Na­bal­lah’s con­vic­tion in forg­ing her ver­sion of an Asi­at­ic al­lure with­in our Caribbean con­text.