Bo­bie-lee Dixon

Ten years ago as a bud­ding de­sign­er, Wendy Hodge promised her­self that she would fight for the rights of the lo­cal fash­ion and gar­ment in­dus­try. Ten years lat­er she has not aban­doned her pledge.Hav­ing es­tab­lished the group Women For Suc­cess in 2005, Hodge, un­der its um­brel­la, host­ed an an­nu­al lo­cal queen show that served to es­sen­tial­ly high­light and show­case the tal­ent and skills of men and women who longed to plant their roots in the fash­ion in­dus­try. With a wrap on that chap­ter of her life, Hodge says Women For Suc­cess now has a new goal-The In­ter­na­tion­al De­sign­er of the Year Com­pe­ti­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to her, the com­pe­ti­tion seeks to ac­knowl­edge "no name" lo­cal de­sign­ers, the con­tri­bu­tions of nail tech­ni­cians, hair dressers, and make-up artists, as they all re­late to the fash­ion and beau­ty in­dus­try."We held a sem­i­nar on No­vem­ber 6, at the St Joseph Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, where we dis­cussed all as­pects of fash­ion, plac­ing more em­pha­sis on the busi­ness side of the in­dus­try," said Hodge.

She dis­closed the sem­i­nar had many speak­ers who pro­vid­ed at­ten­dees with com­pre­hen­sive in­for­ma­tion on the na­ture of the fash­ion world. Among them in­clud­ed di­rec­tor of Caribbean Acad­e­my of Fash­ion and De­sign at UTT, Christo­pher Nathan, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NED­CO) and Graph­ics De­signs, to name a few.

"The whole idea of this is to bring back that love and ap­pre­ci­a­tion for lo­cal gar­ment style.

"We as T&T peo­ple are re­al­ly tal­ent­ed in every form and fash­ion. But we keep look­ing to the world for every­thing. Why can't the world look at us?" Hodge asked.

Look­ing af­ter our own?

Even af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the de­c­la­ra­tion at last year's Fash­ion Week of T&T (FWTT), that the fash­ion in­dus­try should be viewed as an al­ter­na­tive rev­enue-earn­er rather than the coun­try's cur­rent-oil and gas, Hodge said most in­volved in the lo­cal fash­ion in­dus­try weren't se­ri­ous about tak­ing fash­ion to this lev­el be­cause there was still a lot of "fight down" among de­sign­ers. In ad­di­tion, she said, the lo­cal gar­ment in­dus­try was not do­ing its home­work.

"Could you imag­ine that I ap­proached two fab­ric stores to come and speak at the sem­i­nar on fab­rics and one store own­er said to me no one at the store was qual­i­fied to do such, while the oth­er just com­plete­ly blanked me with­out good rea­son. That is the lev­el of 'to­geth­er­ness' we have in the lo­cal fash­ion in­dus­try.

"No one un­der­stands that we need to come to­geth­er for this thing to re­al­ly flour­ish and be­come all that it can be," lament­ed Hodge.She said she hoped her work would not go in vain and prayed that one day we could buy from our­selves."Oh, I would love to walk down Fred­er­ick Street and the store that would catch my eye would be the store that would be sell­ing on­ly lo­cal. On­ly then would I feel that my pur­pose was ful­filled."