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”