Er­line An­drews

Young peo­ple en­ter­ing the fash­ion in­dus­try need to find dif­fer­ent ways achieve fi­nan­cial suc­cess and not lim­it them­selves to de­sign­ing for the run­way or work­ing so­lo, top lo­cal de­sign­er Meil­ing said re­cent­ly.

Meil­ing her­self us­es her skill in var­i­ous ways and is open to col­lab­o­ra­tion.

She re­turned to Car­ni­val cos­tume de­sign­ing this year, help­ing long-time col­lab­o­ra­tor Pe­ter Min­shall bring out the small Mon­day band Miss Miles. She al­so de­signs the cloth­ing for rap­so trio 3Canal's an­nu­al stage pre­sen­ta­tion, which cel­e­brat­ed its tenth an­niver­sary this year. And, she de­signed the cos­tumes for yet-to-be-re­leased lo­cal film Pan! A Mod­ern Odyssey.

Two of her in­terns en­joyed these ex­pe­ri­ences so much that they're now con­sid­er­ing fo­cus­ing on cos­tume de­sign, Meil­ing told a small au­di­ence of as­pir­ing en­tre­pre­neurs at her head­quar­ters at 6 Car­los Street in Wood­brook.

"The film in­dus­try in Trinidad is grow­ing by leaps and bounds every day, so that is an­oth­er way they could be us­ing their skills," Meil­ing said. "They could be de­sign­ing for stage (and) cos­tum­ing movies."

Meil­ing col­lab­o­rat­ed with re­al­i­ty-star de­sign­er Anya Ay­oung-Chee dur­ing Car­ni­val for the cANYAval store, which sold ac­ces­sories and cloth­ing on­line and at Meil­ing's re­tail space at Car­los Street.

The vet­er­an de­sign­er rec­om­mend­ed that young fash­ion en­tre­pre­neurs come to­geth­er in groups to form com­pa­nies. Some are al­ready do­ing this suc­cess­ful­ly, she said.

"I might be strong on so­cial me­dia and mar­ket­ing, you may be the most cre­ative, you may be ex­treme­ly good at con­struc­tion, and you might be good at the fi­nan­cial part of it," she said, de­scrib­ing the way a group part­ner­ship might com­bine skills.

"Come to­geth­er in groups and form your brand," she said.

Meil­ing said when she found­ed her com­pa­ny, Meil­ing Inc, in the 1970s there were a lot of things go­ing for her. Her par­ents sup­port­ed her choice of ca­reer and helped her in dif­fer­ent ways. The neg­a­tive list re­strict­ed the im­por­ta­tion of cloth­ing. The cloth­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try was more vi­brant. And there weren't many fash­ion de­sign­ers. Meil­ing on­ly had one com­peti­tor.

The sit­u­a­tion for young de­sign­ers to­day is very dif­fer­ent, she said, point­ing to the num­ber of grad­u­ates com­ing out of the six-year-old fash­ion pro­gramme at UTT.

"You're not on­ly up against each oth­er, you're al­so up against every­thing com­ing in from Chi­na, every­thing com­ing in some­body's suit­case," she said. "And every­body's shop­ping on­line."

An­oth­er ma­jor prob­lem is the lack of skilled work­ers in the in­dus­try.

"There re­al­ly is no in­dus­try in Trinidad. When I came back (from study abroad) there was an in­dus­try. There were many fac­to­ries and women will­ing to sit at ma­chines.

"Right now it's a dy­ing, dy­ing trade," she said of gar­ment con­struc­tion.

In ad­di­tion to a good en­vi­ron­ment, Meil­ing cred­its her suc­cess to an eth­ic that puts hard work, dis­ci­pline and de­vel­op­ing her brand above the oth­er at­trac­tions of fash­ion de­sign­ing.

Too many young peo­ple seem to want the glam­our and at­ten­tion with­out do­ing enough ac­tu­al work, she said.

"You ar­rive at the event and the pa­parazzi are there, and you're on Face­book, and you're on Twit­ter, and you're on In­sta­gram, and there are a mil­lion self­ies–that I'm sick of–and it's all about you, but there's noth­ing to back up the work," she said, sound­ing ex­as­per­at­ed.

"For many years I did the work and peo­ple didn't have a face to me," she added.

Meil­ing said she's pleased to hear of promis­ing emerg­ing de­sign­ers.

"You're hear­ing new names now, which is great be­cause I'm sick of hear­ing of Meil­ing, Clau­dia (Pe­gus), the Cloth, Heather (Jones)," she said. "We're good, but I want to hear new names."

Meil­ing is do­ing her part to keep new blood pump­ing in­to the in­dus­try by reg­u­lar­ly hir­ing in­terns, one of which was Anya Ay­oung-Chee, and late­ly of­fer­ing part of her re­tail space as a pop�up shop for promis­ing young de­sign­ers. The col­lab­o­ra­tion is mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial, as it draws new gen­er­a­tions of clients to her shop, she said.

Meil­ing said she's dis­cov­ered that some peo­ple are in­tim­i­dat­ed by her.

She was pleased to do the Start­up Grind event–which gave those in at­ten­dance the op­por­tu­ni­ty to chat with the pre­sen­ters be­fore and af­ter the main event–be­cause she wants to dis­pel that no­tion.

"I'm al­ways will­ing to help," she said. "I'd like my lega­cy to be that Meil­ing changed Caribbean fash­ion in some way...and that I opened the door for many young de­sign­ers af­ter me."

The start­up se­ries

Meil­ing was speak­ing be­fore young busi­ness peo­ple and fash­ion stu­dents as part of the third of an on­go­ing se­ries of events called Start­up Grind. It's an in­ter­na­tion­al move­ment to pro­mote en­tre­pre­neur­ship by giv­ing prospec­tive en­tre­pre­neurs the op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet and in­ter­act with suc­cess­ful ones.

The lo­cal Start­up Grind was start­ed by Ger­ard Thomas, who fed Meil­ing ques­tions that had been sub­mit­ted on­line by par­tic­i­pants. Movi­eTowne founder Derek Chin was fea­tured at the last Start­up Grind in No­vem­ber and Is­land Peo­ple's Der­rick Lewis was fea­tured at the first in Oc­to­ber.

"There's so much great knowl­edge, so much ex­pe­ri­ence, so much in­for­ma­tion that en­tre­pre­neurs have," Thomas said at the start of the Meil­ing event. "And un­less we get an op­por­tu­ni­ty to hear their sto­ry, to hear how they dealt with chal­lenges and prob­lems...and the strug­gles they had, then we won't get the in­spi­ra­tion that we need to move for­ward."