Car­ifes­ta is the biggest cel­e­bra­tion of the Arts of the Caribbean and it’s here again af­ter 13 years. Wow, what a birth­day cel­e­bra­tion smack in the mid­dle of my birth month. Every­one knows how much of a Caribbeanist, I am, so I am elat­ed to ex­pe­ri­ence the pro­lif­ic tal­ents and in­ter­act with the wealth of cre­atives over the next cou­ple of weeks here in our fes­ti­val cen­tre of the West In­dies.

There is def­i­nite­ly go­ing to be a treat of fash­ion and de­sign con­tri­bu­tions and col­lec­tions ex­pos­tu­lat­ing through clean-cut, crafty, cou­ture state­ments from with­in the mul­ti­eth­nic and mul­ti­lin­gual Caribbean land­scape.

Fash­ion is go­ing to be rep­re­sent­ed spec­tac­u­lar­ly and fea­tured at the Grand Mar­ket at the Sa­van­nah, al­low­ing a wide cross-sec­tion of style in­flu­encers to co­hab­it for 10 days. What won­drous col­lab­o­ra­tions could be forged with the re­gion­al sim­i­lar­i­ties and in­su­lar dif­fer­ences man­i­fest in that gayelle of Car­ifes­ta ex­cel­lence?

To­day, we peep in­to the sig­nal run­way event to be held at the Hy­att Re­gency Ball­room, ‘Oui Pa­pa Yo!’ with im­ages of three par­tic­i­pat­ing de­sign­ers. Clau­dia Pe­gus, the ac­claimed maven of Caribbean cou­ture and the re­cip­i­ent of the Caribbean Fash­ion Week mas­ter de­sign­er award, will be show­cas­ing in her re­splen­dent­ly sig­na­ture style, brand­ing her push­ing-the-en­ve­lope ex­cel­lence with ex­quis­ite aplomb and meet­ing in­ter­na­tion­al best-prac­tice stan­dards. I can’t wait to see her show-stop­per style and posit­ing Trinidad as a mec­ca of style in the re­gion.

David An­dre Col­lec­tion of Haiti is no stranger to Trinidad. He has been at the pin­na­cle of French Caribbean style flaunt­ing a clean-cut palette of styl­ish sep­a­rates, im­pres­sive en­sem­bles and imag­i­na­tive co­or­di­nates which ex­press­es an un­clut­tered so­phis­ti­ca­tion that is pro­pri­etar­i­ly Caribbean in its com­po­si­tion and French in its su­perla­tive fin­ish and in­trin­sic style. He brings his new, time­less sil­hou­ettes in or­gan­ic tex­tiles to ig­nite our iden­ti­ty-brand­ing Caribbean aes­thet­ic with de rigueur Hait­ian de­sign.

St Lu­cia pos­sess­es a du­al­i­ty of style with its fran­co-an­glo­phone, cross-cul­tur­al ref­er­ence. Rep­re­sent­ing the He­len of the West In­dies is Lyn Bris­tol, with her brand LBM De­signs, who has shown ex­ten­sive­ly, her im­print through­out the re­gion at fes­ti­vals and fash­ion weeks. She is an artist turned de­sign­er and brings her in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic art to tex­tile sur­face treat­ment on breath­ing fab­rics. She cre­ates her ex­pres­sive aes­thet­ic through hand-paint­ing, batik and tie-dye ap­pli­ca­tions which trans­form her ap­par­el to an eclec­tic Afro-Caribbean el­e­gance that is an easy, breezy, beau­ti­ful is­land style.

Be it clean-cut sil­hou­ettes, tex­tured yarns or ex­ot­ic cou­ture, Oui Pa­pa Yo! will cer­tain­ly ex­pound on our Caribbean aes­thet­ic in true-to-form re­gion­al grandeur.