Bai­ley re­galed us with African splen­dour and Min­shall his the­atrics, but up-and-com­ing mas de­sign­er Na­tal­ie Fon­rose wants her brand to be syn­ony­mous with strength, em­pow­er­ment, and free­dom.

"When they think about Fon­rose I want them to think of mim­ic­k­ing who I am...peo­ple don’t sim­ply buy your prod­uct, they buy you," the Car­ni­val cos­tume de­sign­er and in­flu­encer said in a re­cent in­ter­view with Sun­day Guardian.

Fon­rose showed her met­tle in 2017, trad­ing in her over­alls and hard hat at a con­struc­tion com­pa­ny for the draw­ing pen­cil, gems and feath­ers of a mas camp. Since then, her hard-and-fast for­mu­la of heavy re­search, brand­ing and net­work­ing have won her a me­te­oric rise on the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al mas de­sign­ing scene.

The Ch­agua­nas na­tive has been con­tract­ed to mega­band Tribe, for the past two years. This year she

pro­duced the sec­tion "Ki­tana" in Rogue, one of six bands un­der Tribe. With its be­jew­elled roy­al blue, lime green, gold and yel­low bare­ly-there body­wear, face mask, war­rior hood­ie and feath­ered wings, "Ki­tana" was in­spired by the Japan­ese Mor­tal Kom­bat char­ac­ter from Fon­rose’s child­hood days of play­ing video games. It sold out in no time.

Her cos­tumes have been al­so sought af­ter in coun­tries in­clud­ing St Lu­cia, St Kitts, Grena­da, Ba­hamas, An­tigua, Cana­da, and al­most every US lo­ca­tion. She plans to ex­tend her reach to the Eu­ro­pean mar­ket via her next ven­ture—Lon­don Car­ni­val.

At 29, it’s al­most hard to be­lieve that the pe­tite, youth­ful-look­ing Fon­rose was pre­vi­ous­ly a civ­il en­gi­neer­ing tech­ni­cian and pe­tro­le­um en­gi­neer. Back in 2010, the for­mer St Au­gus­tine Girls' High School stu­dent land­ed art schol­ar­ships from four pre­mier in­ter­na­tion­al Art uni­ver­si­ties. Due to a lack of full fund­ing, how­ev­er, she end­ed up pur­su­ing an en­gi­neer­ing de­gree at UWI, St Au­gus­tine.

Though grate­ful for the sound sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion and dis­ci­pline she had re­ceived in ear­li­er days, the free-spir­it­ed Fon­rose had al­ways yearned for a cre­ative out­let.

"While school con­tributed to me be­ing pris­tine and well-round­ed, our school sys­tems are so harsh they sway us from be­ing the slight­est bit out of line with the con­ven­tion­al ca­reer path. It makes you feel like an out­cast. I went to school with girls who just be­came doc­tors, lawyers, and en­gi­neers. I was an out­cast and I was forced to fol­low in line," Fon­rose lament­ed.

This empti­ness car­ried over to her en­gi­neer­ing tenure, de­spite the big bucks. She took up do­ing cus­tom cos­tume de­signs for friends part-time. Through a friend she was of­fered an op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­sign for her first Car­ni­val band, Fan­ta­sy and jug­gled both jobs for a while. Af­ter hav­ing an is­sue with her boss she ini­tial­ly took a month off, then de­cid­ed to quit en­gi­neer­ing al­to­geth­er. Her par­ents backed her up.

With clients rang­ing in age from 18 to late 40s and even 50s, it is this sense of em­pow­er­ment that Fon­rose sees and hopes to con­tin­ue to in­spire in to­day’s fe­male mas­quer­ad­er.

"Women have now found their in­ner strength, their in­de­pen­dence...the more that we as women un­der­stand that we can stand on our own while we still give love and re­spect to our com­pan­ions, once we ex­press to our com­pan­ions that we too can be re­spect­ed and en­joy our­selves, it al­lows a woman to be freer."

She en­cour­ages oth­ers to be coura­geous enough to fol­low their dreams while keep­ing a con­tin­gency plan.

"You’ll nev­er be en­tire­ly ready to start a busi­ness. The best way you can start is to start now...take that leap, but have some sav­ings just in case," she grinned.

BOX, It's the same per­son but a sep­a­rate sto­ry

Q&A with Na­tal­ie Fon­rose

How do civ­il and pe­tro­le­um en­gi­neer­ing trans­late in­to cos­tume de­sign?

"It’s def­i­nite­ly two dif­fer­ent fields. I did Art for CSEC and Cape so I al­ready had a foun­da­tion. Civ­il en­gi­neer­ing deals with draw­ings of build­ings, road­ways, struc­tures, but it’s most­ly fo­cused on sci­ence...Work­ing as a civ­il en­gi­neer al­lowed me to be­come more strate­gic, a bet­ter plan­ner. My ap­proach to cer­tain things, my busi­ness en­tire­ly would be dif­fer­ent from some­body who had artis­tic skills on­ly with­out prop­er struc­tur­al train­ing."

How cre­ative do you have to be to end up de­sign­ing for a mas band?

"You def­i­nite­ly need to be cre­ative or it’s go­ing to be lim­it­ing. It’s not all fun and glam­our. It’s ac­tu­al­ly a lot of hard work."

Why do you think to­day’s woman grav­i­tates to­wards the beads and feath­ers?

"A lot of women now feel lib­er­at­ed. Women have found their pow­er. We are now in a pe­ri­od where women don’t heav­i­ly re­ly on men to be their providers, so by ex­ten­sion they are not seek­ing per­mis­sion to be lib­er­at­ed."

Do you come across women who lack con­fi­dence in their bod­ies? What do you say to them?

"Yes, some would have their in­se­cu­ri­ties, but I feel like it’s al­so an­oth­er woman’s du­ty to as­sist and make her feel beau­ti­ful. You can be just as gor­geous. We can make a few changes to your cos­tume, but it shouldn’t lim­it you from want­i­ng to par­tic­i­pate…I feel like it’s al­so my du­ty to help them feel beau­ti­ful and com­fort­able in them­selves. Car­ni­val is not about you not be­ing good enough...you are good enough."

There are de­trac­tors and crit­ics of the type of cos­tumes Tribe pro­motes. Do you ever feel judged?

"No, be­cause T&T, be­side us be­ing pre­dom­i­nant­ly known for that we are al­so the mec­ca of Car­ni­val, sexy cos­tumes have been in­te­grat­ed in­to our lives since child­hood. The on­ly peo­ple who might be af­fect­ed by it are those with strong re­li­gious be­liefs."

Fash­ion is syn­ony­mous with the dar­ing, the no­to­ri­ous and some de­sign­ers seek out un­usu­al places to show­case. Ref­er­enc­ing the in­ci­dent at the Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral some months ago, would you as a de­sign­er seek out an un­usu­al place?

"I would seek out un­usu­al places, but I wouldn’t do it with­in a church. I feel like it’s sa­cred ground and that’s not an op­tion for me. I feel time and place is worth every­thing."

Is there any­thing that struck you about the oth­er is­lands in terms of their feel­ings to­wards Car­ni­val...your de­signs?

"The small­er is­lands are now ac­cept­ing Car­ni­val to be what it is. Most of their women lacked the con­fi­dence to be in things that ex­posed, like their stom­achs or even thongs. They would want high-waist­ed un­der­wear, full monoki­nis, boy shorts. Where­as there are is­lands that ac­cept it and en­cour­age that whole free­dom to be them­selves. Grena­da re­cent­ly put out a broad­cast to state no wire bras, no skimpy un­der­wear, and this means that you are not per­mit­ting women to be them­selves. (How­ev­er, they sub­se­quent­ly re­viewed the rules and reg­u­la­tions and made amend­ments which now say that there will be no full body paint and ze­ro tol­er­ance for nu­di­ty and in­de­cent ex­po­sure). While I don’t agree with nu­di­ty, I still feel like you are block­ing my free­dom. In Trinidad, we have a lot of pos­i­tives that I on­ly re­alised from trav­el­ling and be­ing a de­sign­er."

Why do you think that you have been able to suc­ceed in your dream when oth­ers may have failed?

"I feel like some things are meant for you. So while you may be try­ing at some­thing so hard and you can’t suc­ceed, it may be an in­di­ca­tion that it’s not for you. For me, it was a nat­ur­al move be­ing a cre­ative. I had my foun­da­tion how­ev­er, I came in­to this not know­ing a lot...it’s a con­stant learn­ing process. I re­mind my­self that you are a con­stant work in progress; es­pe­cial­ly in de­sign­ing. There’s al­ways im­prov­ing skills, im­prov­ing tech­niques, ma­te­ri­als…so I feel like I’m al­ways keep­ing up with what’s trend­ing. Keep­ing up with my phys­i­cal ap­pear­ance, my brand­ing, have all con­tributed to me el­e­vat­ing my­self."

Be­sides de­sign­ing, any­thing else you en­joy...any hob­bies you’d like to share?

"I love to trav­el, I love the movies, swim­ming, go­ing down the is­lands, I feel like na­ture and I are just one."