Joanne Brig­gs

De­sign­er Ecliff Elie re­turned to Trinidad emp­ty hand­ed af­ter his re­cent pre­sen­ta­tion of his Re­sort Menswear Col­lec­tion in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

"One la­dy bought my en­tire col­lec­tion," he said from his re­tail store in Wood­brook.

The oth­er good news is he has an or­der from Be­quia, the sec­ond largest is­land in the Grenadines.

Elie was in­vit­ed to at­tend Lime Fash­ion Caribbean, that boasts of be­ing the pre­mier fash­ion event in the Caribbean for this year. Elie was one of 14 de­sign­ers from the re­gion–in­clud­ing Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, Grena­da and the British Vir­gin Is­lands.

The event spanned two days–a cat­walk pre­sen­ta­tion on day one and a trunk show on day two, which at­tract­ed buy­ers from the Caribbean, Eu­rope, North and South Amer­i­ca.

Elie's re­sort col­lec­tion was colour­ful and trendy yet car­ried his trade­mark pen­chant for well-tai­lored work.

Elie is one of few de­sign­ers who place em­pha­sis on men's wear in T&T. Orig­i­nal­ly from Ch­agua­nas, he moved to Ari­ma at a young age. He start­ed his tai­lor­ing busi­ness at age 14, mak­ing trousers for "part­ners" in school. Back then, they didn't pay him but they brought their ma­te­r­i­al so he could make their uni­form pants. He has al­so sewn for fam­i­ly and friends.

His first store was quite no­tice­able on the East­ern Main Road, Ari­ma, just be­fore Hol­lis Av­enue. It was there for 18 years un­til he de­cid­ed it was time to move West where he opened his store at Ros­ali­no Street in No­vem­ber last year.

"My Ari­ma store was a hub for cus­tomers and 80 per cent was from San Fer­nan­do and sev­en per cent from the West. Now that I am in Port-of-Spain, I kept the South base and in­creased the West base. So it was a busi­ness de­ci­sion," he said.

Elie, who was named Caribbean Fash­ion De­sign­er � Male in 2010 Caribbean Fash­ion Awards at Bar­ba­dos Fash­ion Week, said his clothes are clas­sic menswear with a fo­cus on a nice fit. He has dressed at­tor­neys, sports per­son­al­i­ties, and Ca­lyp­so Monarch 2016 De­von Seales. Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert wore the la­bel when he pre­sent­ed the Na­tion­al Bud­get in Par­lia­ment last Oc­to­ber.

Tra­di­tion­al suits come in greys, blacks and blues. Elie has al­so in­clud­ed live­ly trib­al and flo­ral prints in his line, tak­ing ad­van­tage of the Christ­mas and Car­ni­val sea­sons as those shirts were ei­ther con­sid­ered presents or part of an all-in­clu­sive par­ty en­sem­ble.

With 27 years in busi­ness, Elie says he has not stopped grow­ing. Be­fore he was sole­ly re­spon­si­ble for mea­sur­ing, cut­ting and stitch­ing. Now he is in man­u­fac­tur­ing mode, with a team of tai­lors and stitch­ers who work right be­side the re­tail store.

Growth for Elie is al­so about shar­ing. He gives back in the class­room, speak­ing to stu­dents at YTEPP and he has made an ap­pear­ance at Bel­mont Sec­ondary School's ca­reer day.

"There are no se­crets to the trade," he said. "I re­mem­ber once I had a prob­lem with a pants, and I asked a tai­lor to help me. The man re­fused, telling me 'I can't share what I know.' If both of us in the same busi­ness, there is noth­ing that we don't know. It's about mak­ing the pro­fes­sion bet­ter."

Af­ter the suc­cess of Lime Fash­ion Caribbean, Elie con­tin­ues de­vel­op­ing more for his line. He plans to in­tro­duce his lux­u­ry col­lec­tion in June and he has al­ready be­gun work­ing on his col­lec­tion for 2017.

"We don't wait," he said.