“We are nat­u­ral­ly fash­ion­able and as a re­sult, we are fash­ion­able by na­ture,” de­clares Richard Young, tout­ed the fash­ion gu­ru on Caribbean’s Next Top Mod­el, in the open­ing of the short doc­u­men­tary vi­gnette Haute Caribe: The World of Trinidad and To­ba­go Fash­ion.

Truer words have nev­er been spo­ken.

The fash­ion iden­ti­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go has been com­ing of age since that mon­u­men­tal video re­lease al­most a decade ago. Now the coun­try is in store for the first Vir­tu­al Trade Mis­sion (VTM) cater­ing ex­clu­sive­ly to mar­ket­ing and ex­port­ing lo­cal fash­ion, in­tend­ing to make an in­ter­na­tion­al stamp on the brand iden­ti­ty of Caribbean fash­ion, spear­head­ed by brand T&T.

The thrust is led by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fash­ion Com­pa­ny (Fash­ionTT), a sub­sidiary of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cre­ative In­dus­tries Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Cre­ativeTT), un­der the am­bit of the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, es­tab­lished quite strate­gi­cal­ly, on the heels of that riv­et­ing ex­posé on lo­cal fash­ion.

Fash­ionTT’s man­date is to pro­vide struc­tured and ex­ten­sive ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing sup­port in train­ing and ex­port for lo­cal fash­ion in­dus­try stake­hold­ers. As a re­sult of a rig­or­ous eval­u­a­tion through their Val­ue Chain In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (VCIP), 11 de­sign­ers have qual­i­fied for their Glob­al Val­ue Chain (GVC) tier—Meil­ing, Clau­dia Pe­gus, Heather Jones, Ecliff Elie, Charu Lochan Dass, J’An­gelique, Ne­ha Ka­ri­na, the Hide­out Cloth­ing, 1ndi­vid­ual Aes­thet­ic, Gen­e­sis Swimwear and the Cloth.

An im­mer­sive and dy­nam­ic mer­chan­dis­ing cam­paign will lead up to the VTM, a week of in­ter­ac­tive busi­ness-to-busi­ness and busi­ness-to-con­sumer trade in­ter­face with a mod­ern on­line and on­site com­po­nent fea­tur­ing a blend of live and vir­tu­al pre­sen­ta­tions of col­lec­tions through im­pact­ful dé­filés de mode from Sep­tem­ber 20 to 24. The hall­mark event will com­mem­o­rate the spir­it of sov­er­eign­ty and in­de­pen­dent af­fir­ma­tion, in keep­ing with the na­tion’s Re­pub­lic sta­tus, Trin­bag­on­ian pre­mier feel-good style, as we po­si­tion the lo­cal fash­ion in­dus­try, with the mantra, ‘ready to take on the world.’

1ndividual Aesthetic

“Feel-good philoso­phies al­ways ap­plied to our Caribbean aes­thet­ic,” said Young.

All the GVC can­di­dates have em­bed­ded in their ethos a sense of con­scious fash­ion, fash­ion that speaks vol­umes with­out say­ing a word. There is im­plic­it so­cial con­sumerism in the wear­ing of fash­ion, nowa­days. Fash­ion is trans­form­ing lives, peo­ple want to wear their be­liefs. So brands like the 1ndi­vid­ual Aes­thet­ic and the Cloth who trans­pose their val­ues on­to their fash­ion state­ments, fit in­to the uni­ver­sal par­a­digm of val­ue-added per­son­al ex­pres­sion.

“Style en­dures but fash­ion changes,” as es­poused by style ma­tri­arch, Co­co Chanel, is cer­tain­ly a max­im that at­tests to the in­di­vid­u­al­ism and per­son­al sto­ry cap­ture of mod­ern fash­ion and its mar­ket val­ue. Both these char­ac­ter­is­tics are con­veyed in­ven­tive­ly by Kegan Si­mon of 1ndi­vid­ual Aes­thet­ic and Robert Young of the Cloth. Si­mon says he shouts mes­sages from his sim­ple ur­ban styled com­fort­able fash­ion co­or­di­nates and Robert Young deft­ly lay­ers anec­do­tal and his­tor­i­cal mes­sag­ing through his dis­tinc­tive breath­ing-tex­tile, feel-good sil­hou­ettes.

Is­land lifestyle re­veals that we con­front our wa­ters, rivers and oceans with ab­solute style gus­to. And as in the case of swimwear, we con­sume our­selves with feel-good sen­su­al­i­ty which is a blend of com­fort and func­tion­al­i­ty. The se­cret of great style is to feel good in what you wear and “let it be unique for your­self and yet iden­ti­fi­able to oth­ers,”says An­na Win­tour, Glob­al Chief Con­tent Of­fi­cer/Artis­tic Di­rec­tor at Condé Nast.

Our swimwear la­bel, Gen­e­sis Swimwear is aware of this se­cret and rev­els, as the pre­cur­sor of sexy is­land swimwear, aim­ing to ‘em­pow­er and mo­ti­vate’ and am­pli­fy that is­land-style gus­to. This on­line bou­tique is in­deed cut­ting-edge and mir­rors the evo­lu­tion and the tran­si­tion in­to the e-com­merce world to which we must all be at­tract­ed.

Richard Young, cre­ative di­rec­tor for the GVC ex­plains that “feel-good fash­ion is in its el­e­ment, for we, in Trinidad and To­ba­go, are primed to share our nat­ur­al styl­is­tic in­cli­na­tions with a world hun­gry for our in­her­ent fash­ion­ing. This fash­ion­able-by-na­ture style spans the gamut of tex­ture and colour, the com­men­taries of which, com­ple­ment the feel-good ide­al.”

Through this con­scious fash­ion sto­ry­telling, ad­vanc­ing pos­i­tiv­i­ty and giv­ing-back-to-com­mu­ni­ty, feel-good vibes are giv­en voice and these up­lift­ing val­ues can ig­nite a brand-iden­ti­ty aware­ness, in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the lift­ing of so­cial re­stric­tions, when a height­ened de­sire for feel-good fash­ion would be wel­comed with open arms. This cam­paign is in keep­ing with un­earthing se­crets that are tak­en for grant­ed about the beau­ty of the cre­ative in­dus­try of the re­gion.

Lisa-Marie Daniel, gen­er­al man­ag­er of Fash­ionTT, be­lieves that “an all-con­sum­ing feel-good vi­bra­tion can be spear­head­ed, through our fash­ion im­agers, that would be more than time­ly in a pan­dem­ic cli­mate. It’s trans­for­ma­tive, in­spir­ing and rel­e­vant!”

The Cloth

“All in all, this cam­paign be­lieves in cre­at­ing bal­ance and pre­sumes am­bi­tious­ly that do­ing the right thing can be glam­orous,” Young re­it­er­ates.

“In­deed, fash­ion can spread no­tions of em­pow­er­ment and sus­tain­abil­i­ty—the be­lief that pos­i­tiv­i­ty is need­ed more to­day than ever and that sol­i­dar­i­ty in Caribbean de­sign think­ing can im­pact glob­al style and qual­i­fy the ca­pac­i­ty of its po­ten­tial.”

Aisha Stew­art, project-lead of the GVC roll­out, stress­es: “In fact, buy­ing from brands that align with per­son­al val­ues is a trend gain­ing mo­men­tum for the past ten years, world­wide. So it is a tru­ly au­then­tic ex­pe­ri­ence to feel good by wear­ing lo­cal de­sign­ers while cel­e­brat­ing a buy-lo­cal move­ment that is worth the while.”

In a re­cent press state­ment, Daniel al­so con­firms Fash­ionTT’s ex­port agen­da “through gal­vanis­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion of the unique sell­ing propo­si­tion of Caribbean style, al­beit, ac­knowl­edg­ing Trin­bag­on­ian fash­ion de­sign­ers, as lead­ing the pack, we would be prepped and ready to take on the world.”