On June 4, when Women's In­sti­tute of Al­ter­na­tive De­vel­op­ment (WINAD) wel­comes Ed­i­tor in Chief Emer­i­tus, Essence Mag­a­zine, Su­san L Tay­lor to the shores of T&T, the in­spi­ra­tional speak­er and woman's ad­vo­cate will be ex­posed to a taste of Trin­bag­on­ian fash­ion cour­tesy of Fash­ion Week Trinidad and To­ba­go (FWTT). Em­brac­ing the event theme Cel­e­brat­ing the Jour­ney to Wom­an­hood, the lo­cal fash­ion de­sign­ers slat­ed to show their col­lec­tions at the FWTT events lat­er this year will de­but se­lect pieces. The 30 minute fash­ion show will high­light the di­ver­si­ty that is "wom­an­hood," and will be co­or­di­nat­ed by FWTT cre­ative di­rec­tor Richard Young. WINAD ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, Fo­lade Mu­to­ta, wel­comed the part­ner­ship,. "We see the po­ten­tial for longer term syn­er­gies be­tween the two NGOs, and it is with this in mind that we start with this ven­ture.

"WINAD's pro­grammes en­able women and girls to ex­plore and em­brace an al­ter­na­tive lead­er­ship frame­work, which in­te­grates the col­lec­tive ge­nius of all the peo­ple. We are hap­py that FWTT is adding a cul­tur­al as­pect to our in­au­gur­al lec­ture se­ries event on June 4 at the Hy­att." Speak­ing of the part­ner­ship with WINAD, FWTT chair­man, Di­anne Hunt, stat­ed that "in ex­pand­ing our man­date to en­hance the ex­po­sure and de­vel­op­ment of all play­ers of the fash­ion in­dus­try, we at FWTT are seek­ing out var­i­ous av­enues to give new and un­der­ex­posed tal­ents their chance to shine." Hunt added that WINAD and FWTT al­so shared the com­mon goal of de­vel­op­ment of women in var­i­ous as­pects of their lives. "Many of our key fash­ion in­dus­try play­ers are women, so we were hap­py to part­ner with WINAD in this ven­ture and in­vite WINAD to share the stage with us in our de­vel­op­men­tal pro­grammes, which will be launched lat­er this year." The fash­ion show, co­or­di­nat­ed specif­i­cal­ly for this event, will por­tray dif­fer­ent stages along the jour­ney-our strength, di­ver­si­ty and wom­an­hood-and will fea­ture en­sem­bles from a num­ber of lo­cal de­sign­ers.