Pe­ter Ray Blood

Pop­u­lar mod­el Soowan Bram­ble of Clax­ton Bay par­tic­i­pat­ed in the very first stag­ing of the Best Mod­el of The Uni­verse Pageant in Pana­ma re­cent­ly and emerged as the win­ner.

The Moru­ga beau­ty got the bet­ter of 15 del­e­gates when the pageant was held in Pana­ma City, in April.

Bram­ble, who's been a pro­fes­sion­al mod­el for the past sev­en years, was "hand­picked" by One­ness En­ter­tain­ment T&T CEO Vanes­sa Sa­ha­too-Manoo, fran­chise-hold­er for the Mod­el of the Uni­verse pageant.

Re­veal­ing some­thing of her­self, Bram­ble said: "I come from a large fam­i­ly; three broth­ers and two sis­ters. I orig­i­nal­ly grew up in Moru­ga, which is in the coun­try­side, on a farm. We had lots of an­i­mals, so I grew up see­ing about an­i­mals, in­clud­ing look­ing af­ter pigs and ducks.

"There was al­so a lot fruit trees on the land, so I am some­what of a tomboy. I came af­ter my three broth­ers so I did every­thing they did, in­clud­ing climb­ing trees and fish­ing. I must re­mem­ber my fa­ther's bee farm as he was very proud of it. We sup­plied our com­mu­ni­ty with hon­ey, eggs and goat milk. My moth­er did a per­fect job as a home­mak­er, rais­ing us.

"I at­tend­ed St Mary's Gov­ern­ment School, then went on to Mara­bel­la Ju­nior and Se­nior. I went straight in­to mod­el­ling af­ter grad­u­at­ing from school. Mod­el­ling was my des­tiny and my child­hood dream was to be a mod­el.

"Though I am well-qual­i­fied aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, mod­el­ling re­mains my first love. I was trained by Jacqui Koon How and did my very first show with her, at a small tea par­ty and fash­ion show. I still re­mem­ber that like if it was yes­ter­day. Every­thing I've learned in this busi­ness, Jacqui is re­spon­si­ble for that.

Bram­ble takes is­sue with peo­ple who smirk at the mod­el­ling and fash­ion in­dus­try as she thinks it a pos­i­tive char­ac­ter-build­ing pro­fes­sion.

She said: "I've nev­er en­tered a Miss T&T pageant but I have en­tered many oth­er beau­ty queen pageants. I think queen shows can be like a pos­i­tive ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ty for young girls. It should al­so be about build­ing self es­teem and de­vel­op­ing com­mu­ni­ties, and help­ing peo­ple. Now, I find that there is too much pol­i­tics in­volved in pageants."

"Mod­el­ling has helped me in many ways, be­gin­ning with my self es­teem. I was a some­what shy child who didn't act out on do­ing things I in­ward­ly want­ed to do.

"Mod­el­ling gave me that self con­fi­dence to ven­ture in­to sev­er­al ar­eas, as well as gave me a pos­i­tive voice in the mod­el­ling are­na. Young ladies now seek my ad­vice on sev­er­al things per­tain­ing to mak­ing a ca­reer in mod­el­ling and fash­ion. I see my­self as a pos­i­tive in­flu­ence in the busi­ness."

De­scrib­ing her­self as a role mod­el for as­pir­ing young mod­els, Bram­ble said: "Young women wish­ing to en­ter this busi­ness need to first re­alise that if this in­dus­try is for you, you will know it. If how­ev­er, it is not for you, you will al­so know it–just don't be­come too pas­sion­ate about it.

"It's about be­ing pre­pared to do work very hard to be suc­cess­ful, es­pe­cial­ly in a small place like T&T. It's not just about the glitz and glam­our. Mod­el­ling is a busi­ness which should not be tak­en light­ly but, as like any oth­er pro­fes­sion, is se­ri­ous busi­ness."

Gem­i­ni-born Bram­ble said she in­tends stay­ing in the fash­ion in­dus­try "for as long as pos­si­ble."

She added: "I know that I have a fu­ture in this in­dus­try, though not know­ing right now ex­act­ly what. Who knows? I may open a mod­el­ling agency, de­sign­ing and styling, do­ing con­sul­tan­cy, maybe an all-pur­pose mod­el­ling train­ing cen­tre which fo­cus­es on per­son­al de­vel­op­ment. I def­i­nite­ly would like to get mar­ried, and do so be­fore hav­ing any kids. I want to have a fam­i­ly."

About her par­tic­i­pa­tion in the in­ter­na­tion­al pageant, Bram­ble said: "Vanes­sa (Sa­ha­too-Manoo) saw me at a fash­ion show in south, con­tact­ed me and the rest is his­to­ry."

In­ter­ject­ed Sa­ha­too-Manoo: "I was sim­ply en­thralled by Soowan, the mo­ment I saw her on stage. She elec­tri­fied the stage and the au­di­ence al­so seemed cap­ti­vat­ed. I then did some re­search, ask­ing peo­ple about her, and every­one spoke favourable about her.

"To me, she had all the in­gre­di­ents to rep­re­sent T&T in this pageant. This was my first year as fran­chise-hold­er of Miss Best Mod­el of the Uni­verse. My com­pa­ny has pre­vi­ous­ly se­lect­ed oth­er girls for oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al pageants, and we've al­ways had good re­sults.

"Soowan will be trav­el­ling to Pana­ma and oth­er re­gion­al des­ti­na­tions as Miss Best Mod­el of the Uni­verse.

"She will be mod­el­ling with the par­ent com­pa­ny there, and will al­so be pro­mot­ing projects my com­pa­ny is de­vot­ed to. I would like to have Soowan go to Latin Amer­i­ca and USA to pro­mote T&T as a tourism des­ti­na­tion, and as a place where fash­ion and mod­el­ling play an in­te­gral part in the tourism thrust."

Aside from win­ning the main prize in Pana­ma, Bram­ble al­so won awards for Best Na­tion­al Cos­tume (God­dess of the Pitch Lake, de­signed and made by Ger­ald Hart of Harts Mas); Best Cat­walk Mod­el; Best Body; and, Best Pho­to Mod­el.

Amongst her nu­mer­ous spon­sors, Bram­ble is par­tic­u­lar­ly grate­ful to her de­sign­er Heather Jones, Min­istry of Arts & Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, Fran­cis Fash­ion, Sascha Cos­met­ics; A-Lan swim wear de­sign­er Rhea Ahong; Jen Care Skin Farm; Steve Sama­roo; LeShorn Prescott's Elle Dance Com­pa­ny; and, New Wave Health Club in Cou­va.

On her re­turn home, Bram­ble was well re­ceived in the VIP Lounge of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port by Min­istry of Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism & The Arts of­fi­cial Vel Lewis; Heather Jones of Heather Jones De­signs; Miss One­ness T&T Beau­ty Pageant Di­rec­tor Vidya Mun­gal-Bisses­sar; Kendell Placide of Nis­si Tours and Trav­el Ltd; and, Sa­ha­too-Manoo.