Fay­ola K J Fras­er

Mi­lan Fash­ion Week is a cloth­ing trade show held se­mi-an­nu­al­ly in Mi­lan, Italy, and one of the most revered col­la­tions of icon­ic fash­ion in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Dur­ing the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Mi­lan Fash­ion Week, a Trinida­di­an, cre­ative di­rec­tor of Sagaboi, Ge­off Coop­er brought his de­signs to life on the run­way of the high­ly-ac­claimed event. From his hum­ble be­gin­nings in the “bu­col­ic, idyl­lic vil­lage” of Moru­ga, Coop­er has made his name in the fash­ion in­dus­try, and his most re­cent col­lec­tion named “Ca­lyp­so Ar­rival” pays homage to ca­lyp­so mu­sic and fash­ion, and is char­ac­terised by one of T&T’s most dis­tinct and em­blem­at­ic char­ac­ters, the smooth, suave “Sagaboi”.

Coop­er, a Merikin de­scen­dant, de­scribed grow­ing up in Moru­ga, on the very tip of the south­ern­most point of T&T, steeped in cul­ture, with a deeply root­ed ap­pre­ci­a­tion for our her­itage. Fol­low­ing his tenure at the then Moru­ga Com­pos­ite, Coop­er con­tin­ued his ed­u­ca­tion in the Unit­ed States and sub­se­quent­ly pur­sued var­i­ous ca­reers–in ac­count­ing, at the Unit­ed Na­tions, and as a fash­ion writer. Even­tu­al­ly, he found his stride in the fash­ion pub­li­ca­tion are­na, found­ing a men’s fash­ion mag­a­zine called G Caribbean, which he de­scribes as the GQ of the Caribbean, which even­tu­al­ly be­came Sagaboi.

How­ev­er, this wasn’t Coop­er’s first brush with fash­ion, as he found mul­ti­ple sources of in­spi­ra­tion in his vil­lage in Moru­ga dur­ing his child­hood, in­clud­ing be­ing “in­spired by my mom’s nurs­ing uni­forms and style.” Coop­er fond­ly re­mem­bered falling in love with fash­ion as a child, cre­at­ing and de­sign­ing out­fits in­spired by his aunts and grand­moth­er who were seam­stress­es in their own right, and al­so be­ing awed by the in­tri­ca­cy and vi­bran­cy of the gowns and garb of the Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist women in their church.

 “The spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion they had to their cloth­ing was in­spir­ing,” he re­mem­bers, “and they ex­ud­ed beau­ty, con­fi­dence, au­thor­i­ty and al­lure,” all of which made him very drawn to fash­ion.

Through­out his il­lus­tri­ous ca­reer, Coop­er has had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to col­lab­o­rate with many of the well-known stal­warts in the T&T fash­ion in­dus­try, such as Meil­ing and Mill­house. He has al­so re­ceived in­ter­na­tion­al ac­claim, with his fash­ions be­ing dis­played on GQ’s web­site, Es­quire and the Evening Stan­dard in the UK. As a style ed­i­tor, Coop­er said, he is al­so of­ten tout­ed for his per­son­al style, as one of the best dressed men not on­ly in a room, but in a city, and de­scribes his aes­thet­ic as “an amal­ga­ma­tion of my mul­ti-eth­nic her­itage, the vi­su­al­ly var­ie­gat­ed places I have lived in, the me­dia I con­sume, all re­fined in a very ‘Ge­off’ way.” Through­out his ca­reer, Coop­er has main­tained a core ethos, how­ev­er, “to rep­re­sent our Trinida­di­an cul­ture at its best, and re­al­ly al­low our cul­ture to be seen along­side the world’s best.”

His col­lec­tion be­ing fea­tured at Mi­lan’s Fash­ion Week cer­tain­ly brought life to that ethos, as Sagaboi is the first brand from T&T and the Caribbean to show­case of­fi­cial­ly at Mi­lan Fash­ion Week. On the day of his show, Coop­er’s show­case was im­me­di­ate­ly fol­lowed by big brands such as Pra­da, Tom Ford and Gior­gio Ar­mani, and the cap­tive au­di­ence that await­ed to see his fash­ions along­side those brands was not of his wildest dreams. He de­scribed a range of emo­tions both dur­ing and af­ter the show, “the over­whelm­ing sense of grat­i­tude, but al­so the fear and the im­mense pres­sure to per­form at my best for my coun­try.”

The prepa­ra­tion and pro­duc­tion of the col­lec­tion for the fash­ion week start­ed in 2023 and took place most­ly in T&T. Coop­er worked with lo­cal cro­cheters to pro­duce fab­ric and de­signs, had in­put from lo­cal cos­tume de­sign­ers and artists to pro­duce breast­plates for the cloth­ing, col­lab­o­rat­ed with BLAK­GOLD–a DJ duo from T&T and Ja­maica to pro­duce the show’s mu­sic, and lever­aged the skills of lo­cal seam­stress­es and tai­lors to get the col­lec­tion com­plet­ed. Coop­er de­scribed the sat­is­fac­tion of ral­ly­ing our lo­cal cre­ative ef­forts for the col­lec­tion, as it was a clear in­di­ca­tion of the tal­ent and abil­i­ty of our cre­ative com­mu­ni­ty.

De­spite the odds and with­out half the re­sources of those big­ger brands, Sagaboi took the stage to tell the sto­ry of a unique­ly Caribbean aes­thet­ic with its rich­ness

of colour and full­ness of fab­ric.

Coop­er de­tailed the in­spi­ra­tion for the col­lec­tion as root­ed in the his­to­ry of ca­lyp­so, from the 1900s to the present. He spent hours pour­ing over cov­ers of ca­lyp­so al­bums, with ca­lyp­so­ni­ans both male and fe­male dressed in their finest, in­clud­ing the Mighty Spar­row, Lord Blakey, Ca­lyp­so Rose, La­dy Trinidad, among oth­ers. He de­scribed ca­lyp­so as not on­ly the “sound of the Caribbean,” but al­so “the first space where we could re­al­ly see our cul­ture im­pact the en­tire world over the past cen­tu­ry.” Ex­am­in­ing the im­pact of our ca­lyp­so on our fash­ion and cre­ative ex­pres­sion, he iden­ti­fied and per­son­i­fied the de­vel­op­ment of “ca­lyp­so cou­ture”, char­ac­terised by sway skirts for women, shorts for men, ruf­fled shirts all filled with colour­ful tones and ex­quis­ite frills. Thus, this pow­er­ful cap­ti­va­tion of an in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ence and glob­al stage by ca­lyp­so, set the stage for Coop­er’s Sagaboi at Mi­lan Fash­ion Week.

Sagaboi’s Fall/Win­ter 2024 col­lec­tion is a tes­ta­ment to Coop­er’s com­mit­ment to in­no­va­tion, cul­tur­al au­then­tic­i­ty, and artis­tic ex­pres­sion, invit­ing au­di­ences to im­merse them­selves in the en­chant­i­ng world of ca­lyp­so-in­spired de­signs.