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Friday, July 11, 2025

Yuma celebrates opulence with Luxe

by

9 days ago
20250702

Se­nior Re­porter

jo­van.rav­el­lo@guardian.co.tt

YU­MA Vibe set the tem­per­a­ture for an­oth­er Car­ni­val sea­son with their pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2026 theme Luxe: A Lav­ish Es­cape, at the Port-of-Spain In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front on Sat­ur­day evening.

Luxe’s de­signs ref­er­ence glob­al stan­dards of af­flu­ence such as the House of Ver­sace, Faberge eggs, and the feel­ing of Nir­vana, meant to im­merse mas­quer­aders in an at­mos­phere of beau­ty, abun­dance, and grandeur

Ac­cord­ing to YU­MA di­rec­tor Tanya Gomes, Sat­ur­day’s pre­sen­ta­tion, a ca­coph­o­ny of colour on a bed of well-cu­rat­ed sound de­sign, serves as an in­vi­ta­tion to the band’s fol­low­ing to as­pire to the fin­er things in life.

“Our in­tent with this par­tic­u­lar pre­sen­ta­tion, which is the first time we’ve done a full blingy cos­tume de­sign col­lec­tion,” Gomes ex­plained back­stage, “we want peo­ple to ex­pe­ri­ence on the road Mon­day and Tues­day some essence of where you want to be in life.”

In 2025, ‘Echoes of Iere’ sought to give Yu­mans a greater ap­pre­ci­a­tion of our two is­lands. That ex­po­si­tion in­to T&T cul­ture, colour, and the land and seascape marked a decade and a half of one of the coun­try’s es­tab­lished Car­ni­val im­prints.

The band’s de­sign team spent the last six months con­cep­tu­al­is­ing a 14-sec­tion be­jew­elled ode to op­u­lence to mark its 16th year on the road.

“We are tired, how­ev­er, we are very hap­py about this pre­sen­ta­tion in par­tic­u­lar and we al­ways try our very best to come up with a theme and in­spi­ra­tions that no one has come up with be­fore,” Gomes said. “Our themes have been very unique from in­cep­tion to now.”

De­sign­er Ale­jan­dro Gomez pro­duced three of this year’s sec­tions, in­clud­ing ‘Pink Di­a­mond’, based on the world’s most ex­pen­sive di­a­mond, the deep, moody ‘Mer­lot’, and ‘Cham­pagne’ meant to evoke a cel­e­bra­to­ry ex­plo­sion of bub­bles.

Now in his sixth year with the Wood­brook-based band, Gomez says, de­spite its size on the road, YU­MA’s sense of fam­i­ly made the months of work worth it.

“It has evolved dras­ti­cal­ly from the time I start­ed to now, and I think YU­MA’s core fol­low­ing has grown in­to this fam­i­ly. New mas­quer­aders are all over the world, and wher­ev­er you go, you find a YU­MA mas­quer­ad­er and it feels like fam­i­ly.”

Gomez is part of a de­sign­er cast which al­so in­cludes Marie Col­lette, Chris­t­ian Chow Chung, Kwe­si Mc­Don­ald, Rawle Per­manand, and Bar­ba­dos’ Lau­ren Austin, among oth­ers, a team he de­scribes as “a crazy group of cre­atives that make YU­MA work.”

As Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ences have them­selves be­come more lux­u­ri­ous, YU­MA con­tin­ues to push the en­ve­lope. How­ev­er, hav­ing po­si­tioned it­self at the very be­gin­ning of band launch sea­son, Gomes is hold­ing the large band’s fu­ture plans close.

“There are some things that we can’t say too ear­ly be­cause there are oth­er bands that have to launch,” Gomes de­murred , “so we def­i­nite­ly won’t be able to let that cat out the bag...or cou­ple cats, but yes there are in­no­va­tions com­ing”


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