BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

(bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt)

Noth­ing more but the finest cui­sine, art, mu­sic, fash­ion, and craft will be show­cased once again at LEVE, 2019. The ex­clu­sive tourism and lifestyle in­vi­ta­tion-on­ly event host­ed by Tourism In­tel­li­gence In­ter­na­tion­al (TII), promis­es to “take it a step fur­ther”, this year with its theme, “Fash­ion­ing Our Fu­ture.”

Ac­cord­ing to TTI's di­rec­tor and brain of LEVE, Dr Au­liana Poon, the LEVE brand was de­vel­oped to push the en­ve­lope on mar­ket­ing and pro­mot­ing To­ba­go's cre­atives, cre­ations, en­er­gy, and lifestyle, thus un­cov­er­ing the trea­sures found in its peo­ple and at­tract­ing po­ten­tial buy­ers and in­vestors.

The Mor­vant-Laven­tille na­tive al­so stressed TII was com­mit­ted to mak­ing its busi­ness mod­el and its op­er­a­tions more and more sus­tain­able; adopt­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment cri­te­ria in all ar­eas of its busi­ness.

“We in­tend to show the rest of the world sus­tain­abil­i­ty at its best; that sus­tain­abil­i­ty can be sexy; sus­tain­abil­i­ty can be el­e­gant,” Poon ex­pressed.

Per­haps that's why LEVE is go­ing “big” on fash­ion this year, show­cas­ing T&T's finest de­sign­ers who bring with them their sig­na­ture touch­es.

At the Forbes-rat­ed Vil­la Be­ing, in Arnos Vale To­ba­go, where the event has been held since 2016, on one stage guests will be able to feast their eyes on some of the most at­trac­tive de­signs from T&T fash­ion de­sign­ers who Poon be­lieves are trans­form­ing the in­dus­try and us­ing the chang­ing pub­lic per­cep­tion to­wards en­vi­ron­ment sus­tain­abil­i­ty to de­vel­op a new de­sign ethos.

Un­der the cre­ative artistry of one of the Caribbean's lead­ing fash­ion and beau­ty ex­perts, Richard Young, the evening will see the likes of de­sign­ers Robert Young, who has made state­ments with his so­cial­ly con­scious gar­ments un­der his la­bel The Cloth; car­ni­val and re­sort wear de­sign­ers Chris­t­ian Bou­caud and Rhion Ro­many would al­so present, while 'ris­ing star' in re­sort and swimwear Do­minic Hutch will 'wet his feet' at the pres­ti­gious gath­er­ing card­ed for May 5, 2019.

Last year the event took on a 'new look' with the live ex­change of vows amongst six cou­ples, which co­in­cid­ed with that year's theme—'Love is in the air.'

The To­ba­go House As­sem­bly (THA)-en­dorsed event al­so took a de­ci­sion last year to dis­con­tin­ue its orig­i­nal con­cept of be­ing a fore­run­ner fringe event lead­ing up to the To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence.

Poon, an econ­o­mist and ac­tivist for sus­tain­able tourism, ex­plained to the Sun­day Guardian that sev­er­al rea­sons were tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion in­flu­enc­ing the change. One in par­tic­u­lar which she high­light­ed was the need for peo­ple to pa­tro­n­ise LEVE for LEVE and not be­cause they were vis­it­ing the is­land for jazz. She al­so not­ed LEVE did not want to com­pete with oth­er events for the same peo­ple, ho­tels or air­line.

Oth­er en­thrall­ments for LEVE 2019 in­clude the work of T&T artists, who will get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have their pieces auc­tioned at the event. This year un­der the co­or­di­na­tion of To­ba­go-born artist Tom­ley Roberts, the line up of artists in­clude Glenn Roopc­hand and Ja­son Nedd as well as re­gion­al vi­su­al artist and en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist Rober­to Tjon-A-Meeuw (based in Cu­ra­cao) and Do­mini­ca's no­table painter Earl Eti­enne.

When it comes to cui­sine this year's chef, Xenon Thomas is ex­pect­ed to bring to­geth­er the finest in­dige­nous cui­sine and in­ter­na­tion­al con­cepts and in­flu­ences to pa­trons.

Poon com­mu­ni­cat­ed TII was aim­ing to achieve three goals with this year's show­case—to pro-ac­tive­ly demon­strate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and pro­vide a plat­form for per­son­al and com­mu­ni­ty ac­tions that will en­sure an en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly safe and sus­tain­able en­vi­ron­ment for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions; to show­case tal­ent­ed “Trin­bag­on­ian” fash­ion de­sign­ers, culi­nary prac­ti­tion­ers, ac­ces­sories pro­duc­ers and en­ter­tain­ers to an in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ence and to pro­mote the is­land of To­ba­go as the quin­tes­sen­tial eco­tourism va­ca­tion spot and 'des­ti­na­tion must.'

For more in­for­ma­tion on LEVE 2019 www.leve-caribbean.com/www.be­ing-to­ba­go.com