Tremaine So­ca Warn­er

Fash­ion and busi­ness are hinged to each oth­er.

Hot on the heels of launch­ing his lat­est col­lec­tion in the US and in Sin­ga­pore, To­bag­on­ian de­sign­er Kevin Ay­oung-Julien says it wasn't un­til he grasped this con­cept that his busi­ness re­al­ly took off.

Ear­ly last month, his com­pa­ny Kaj De­signs launched its lat­est re­sort col­lec­tion Tribu Sauvage at the In­ter­mez­zo Col­lec­tions show in the US be­fore head­ing to Sin­ga­pore to un­veil the col­lec­tion at the in­ter­na­tion­al fash­ion trade show Blue­print.

The T&T Guardian caught up with Ay­oung-Julien at the Trade & In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC) at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel on June 14 where he gave T&T its first taste of Tribu Sauvage.

Though things seemed to have fast-tracked for him, he says it took some time to get to this point.

"In the for­ma­tive years, things were re­al­ly hard. Fash­ion and busi­ness go hand in hand and I think this is a prob­lem that a lot of us Caribbean de­sign­ers have. We are not taught the busi­ness side of things so in my ini­tial years I felt like I was climb­ing a greasy pole. It was dif­fi­cult not hav­ing all the re­sources or the sup­port so I would of­ten find my­self start­ing back at square one."

Though he did not al­ways plan to choose a ca­reer in fash­ion, the self-taught de­sign­er said he spent much of his teenage years do­ing sketch­es and ex­per­i­ment­ing with dif­fer­ent fab­ric paints and ap­pliqu� tech­niques.

He told the T&T Guardian he al­ways ad­mired lo­cal de­sign­ers such as Clau­dia Pe­gus, Meil­ing and Robert Young.

In 2005, Ay­oung-Julien de­cid­ed to try his hand in the fash­ion in­dus­try and launched his first col­lec­tion, Chacha­la­ca at the Caribbean Fash­ion Week in Ja­maica. In 2007, he un­veiled Ec­cen­su­al: Shake Well and Stir be­fore launch­ing an­oth­er col­lec­tion called Wild Things in 2008. It was then that he took time off to strate­gise and de­vel­op a strong busi­ness plan to en­sure the longevi­ty of his brand.

Ay­oung-Julien then teamed up with pub­li­cist and busi­ness con­sul­tant Liza Miller who is now his busi­ness part­ner and the CEO of Kaj De­signs. In 2010, he launched Kaj's first-ever re­sort col­lec­tion called Shore Cul­ture. He said it was im­por­tant that young de­sign­ers un­der­stand the sec­toral link be­tween fash­ion and busi­ness.

"It's dif­fi­cult to just be a cre­ative per­son with­out the mar­ket­ing per­son or the busi­ness per­son be­cause all these el­e­ments come to­geth­er to make your brand. Your brand is not sole­ly a dress. You have to think about how to mar­ket that dress and how to re­fine it to suit a par­tic­u­lar de­mo­graph­ic."

He de­scribes Kaj's lat­est col­lec­tion as one that com­bines lux­u­ry with the ap­peal of sim­ple de­signs and "jux­ta­pos­es bold trib­al in­fu­sions against a back­drop of wild an­i­mal and cam­ou­flage prints."

The Scar­bor­ough-born de­sign­er says the el­e­ments of Kaj De­signs are in­dige­nous, sen­su­al and un­de­ni­ably Caribbean.

"It is a fu­sion of all these el­e­ments com­ing to­geth­er," he said. "The lines are sim­ple, the prints are bold and the looks can go from day to evening.

"You can mix and match pieces and that's the idea of re­sort wear. It is catered to a trav­el lifestyle where you can just pick up some­thing and go."

He said Kaj caters for women who are con­fi­dent and pre­pared to deal with the at­ten­tion they will re­ceive when they wear his de­signs.

Asked about his re­cent for­ays in­to in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets, Ay­oung-Julien said see­ing what oth­er de­sign­ers are do­ing has helped him to "tweak and re­fine his fo­cus."

"In the Caribbean we of­ten fol­low suit with what the Amer­i­cans are do­ing. I think that in the Asian mar­ket they have a dis­tinc­tive view point, they are a bit risqu� and ad­ven­tur­ous so they are open to new things. I think in the Caribbean it takes some time be­fore peo­ple buy on or catch on to cer­tain trends."

In Ju­ly of this year, Kaj De­signs will be avail­able in Man­hat­tan, New York at a show­room and bou­tique called Li­on'es­que Style. Kaj is al­so look­ing in­to ne­go­ti­a­tions with oth­er re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al stores to in­crease the ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty of the brand.

Ay­oung-Julien says he is even more ex­cit­ed for the re­gion than he is for him­self or for the his brand since these ad­vance­ments pro­vide great mar­ket­ing for the Caribbean.

He said his ul­ti­mate goal is to be a small part of the ef­fort to move Caribbean fash­ion for­ward and to make Caribbean style­un­der­stood.

"What Caribbean de­sign­ers some­times lack is the abil­i­ty to un­der­stand what is uni­ver­sal with­out los­ing what our in­trin­sic el­e­ments are...to keep the el­e­ments that are Caribbean but add a uni­ver­sal ap­peal. I want peo­ple to say that I'm ground­ed in my Caribbean roots. Sim­ple as that."

�2 Kaj De­signs, vis­it www.es­tu­aryPR.com, send an email to liza@es­tu­aryPR.com or con­tact Miller at 367-5295 or 761-1195.