Roslyn Car­ring­ton

Most of us make our own lit­tle ef­forts at re­cy­cling. We print on the flip side of the page, sep­a­rate our plas­tic bot­tles, and take our emp­ties back to the su­per­mar­ket. But re­cy­cled cloth­ing? Whoa, there!

For Tri­ni de­sign­er Chris­t­ian Bou­caud, mak­ing a fash­ion state­ment out of re­cy­cled fab­ric isn't a tree-hug­ging fan­ta­sy, but the ba­sis of her stun­ning new line called Reuse, Re­cy­cle, and Recre­ate. Bou­caud takes used cloth­ing-es­pe­cial­ly jeans-cur­tains, sheets and cush­ions, and turns them in­to show-stop­ping gar­ments that lit­er­al­ly have in­ter­na­tion­al buy­ers beg­ging for more.

But be­fore we go on, let's get the 'ick' fac­tor out of the way once and for all, shall we? The fab­rics she us­es aren't the re­sult of dump­ster-div­ing ex­pe­di­tions, but are do­nat­ed by friends and fam­i­ly. They're sani­tised be­fore she even be­gins to cut, and again af­ter the gar­ment is com­plet­ed. So clients can rest as­sured that Bou­caud's de­signs don't on­ly look fan­tas­tic, but they're al­so as wear­able as any­thing fresh off the shelf.

Like most peo­ple lucky enough to turn their great pas­sion in­to their ca­reer, she start­ed young, learn­ing to sew at age eight. And while all girls cre­ate de­sign­er orig­i­nals for their pa­per dolls and then move on to some­thing else, Bou­caud im­mersed her­self in the world of beau­ti­ful gar­ments and nev­er left. She showed her first col­lec­tion at 17. What hap­pened next sounds like a made-for-Hol­ly­wood script. By an ac­ci­dent of Fate-or by Di­vine de­cree, you de­cide-leg­endary de­sign­er Christo­pher Nathan was in the au­di­ence. Nathan, the Co-or­di­na­tor for the Caribbean Acad­e­my of Fash­ion and De­sign at UTT, founder of Co­co Vel­vet and the force be­hind T&T Top Mod­el, im­me­di­ate­ly draft­ed her in, us­ing her pieces when­ev­er he had a show.

Ten years lat­er, she's known large­ly for her swimwear, but wants fash­ion lovers to know that she has much more to of­fer, es­pe­cial­ly her styl­ish ready-to-wear lines, which in­cludes plus-size items. Be­cause each piece comes from a dif­fer­ent source gar­ment, each is unique. Her newest line was a spin off from the col­lec­tion she showed at Fash­ion Week this year, a line she called 'PheO' in ho­n­our of her late grand­moth­er. This styl­ish la­dy used strings, ties, and lots of fab­ric, and for Bou­caud the col­lec­tion is a strong re­minder of her. Her grand­moth­er al­so loved and re­spect­ed the en­vi­ron­ment, and from this, Bou­caud drew her in­spi­ra­tion.

"Our car­bon foot­print is ridicu­lous," she com­ments, point­ing out that T&T ranks un­ac­cept­ably high in the world in terms of car­bon emis­sions per capi­ta. Al­though T&T has en­dured an in­ter­na­tion­al tongue-lash­ing for our lais­sez-faire at­ti­tude to­wards sus­tain­abil­i­ty, Bou­caud thinks there's hope. "Peo­ple are try­ing to play their part. We have NGOs and oth­ers crop­ping up all over Trinidad." She's al­so try­ing to make con­nec­tions with a few of them, such as Sus­tain T&T, and has been work­ing with the en­vi­ron­men­tal so­ci­ety in UWI. She no­ticed that a close friend rou­tine­ly tossed out his jeans when­ev­er a new style came in, and one day she took a pair and fash­ioned a swim­suit from it. It was a ma­jor hit at Fash­ion Week. She be­gan col­lect­ing in earnest, beg­ging friends and fam­i­ly for their castoffs, and work­ing them in­to her de­signs.

That tiny bit of in­spi­ra­tion led to a rev­o­lu­tion. "The re­sponse was out of this world. I have peo­ple in New York and Tokyo wait­ing for new pieces for their bou­tiques." The de­mand is so great that sourc­ing used cloth­ing has be­come a ma­jor con­cern, and since cloth­ing re­cy­cling isn't the norm in Trinidad, she's think­ing of look­ing out­side our shores for sup­plies. She's al­so just start­ed a den­im dri­ve on Face­book, so­lic­it­ing used fab­ric, es­pe­cial­ly jeans. In the spir­it if en­vi­ron­men­tal con­scious­ness, she will do­nate part of the pro­ceeds from her line to char­i­ty.

While Bou­caud has great hopes for the lo­cal fash­ion in­dus­try, she thinks it's dif­fi­cult to suc­ceed. This is large­ly be­cause Tri­ni tastes are in­flu­enced by ex­ter­nal forces. "We have a love for every­thing be­sides our own. Un­less we see some­thing pop­u­lar in the US, we're not go­ing to pay at­ten­tion to it." Fur­ther­more, for­eign de­sign­ers crib their ideas from Caribbean cul­ture, and we, in turn, im­i­tate their de­signs. "So we're copy­ing a copy," she laments. "We're copy­ing what we have nat­u­ral­ly."

"I wasn't sure I'd be able to sur­vive on fash­ion alone," she ad­mits. "But I think I'm the luck­i­est fash­ion de­sign­er ever, be­cause so far, it has been good." That's not to say she isn't hedg­ing her bets. She's cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing her de­gree in So­ci­ol­o­gy at UWI, be­cause "you have to have a back­up plan". It's even hard­er to be­come an eco-de­sign­er, one who re­lies al­most ex­clu­sive­ly on sus­tain­able or reusable ma­te­ri­als, be­cause of the lack of fa­cil­i­ties and sup­plies lo­cal­ly.