Car­ol Quash

There is al­ways a cer­tain lev­el of risk in­volved in busi­ness – risks that may some­times re­sult in loss­es. Own­er of Fly Young Gen­tle­man Ap­par­el, Ephraim Kadeem Ser­rette has been there, but he has re­fused to al­low this set­back from pre­vent­ing him to con­tin­ue to build his brand.

Fly Young Gen­tle­man Ap­par­el (FY­GA) car­ries T-shirts, hood­ies and hats for men, all with lo­cal cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance.

“Last year I had sourced some jer­seys from a com­pa­ny in In­dia. So they made the jer­seys, and they did the prints as well. The qual­i­ty was good, so I or­dered some­thing again, and paid my mon­ey. I haven’t heard back from them since, so I had to cut that as a loss. But I couldn’t let that stop me from con­tin­u­ing the busi­ness.”

He told Busi­ness Guardian he now sources all his stock and gets them print­ed lo­cal­ly.

Ser­rette, a fire­man by pro­fes­sion, start­ed the busi­ness ten years ago, af­ter an in­jury gave him a nudge in the di­rec­tion of the fash­ion in­dus­try.

“I was al­ways in­to fash­ion, and I was in­to foot­ball as well. I thought foot­ball was ac­tu­al­ly go­ing to be my ca­reer, un­til I got in­jured.”

Now with six cul­tur­al­ly ur­ban col­lec­tions to his brand, and more on the way, he has no re­grets about where he has end­ed up. But, he ad­mit­ted, there were times when he wasn’t sure if this was what he want­ed to do, be­cause he wasn’t get­ting the en­cour­age­ment to push through it.

“But I would al­ways say this is my ba­by so I will nev­er give up. I made a promise to my­self last year that I am not giv­ing up on my brand, be­cause no­body could take me se­ri­ous­ly if I don’t take my brand it­self se­ri­ous­ly.”

Among his col­lec­tions are the MCMXC col­lec­tion, 1990 in Ro­man Nu­mer­als, and a sig­nif­i­cant year in the his­to­ry of T&T.

“I was ac­tu­al­ly watch­ing an in­ter­view on YouTube about Abu Bakr talk­ing about the 1990 coup,” which in­spired a col­lec­tion of scenes from the six-day siege.

He al­so has a Mighty Shad­ow col­lec­tion, which pays trib­ute to the lega­cy of the late Win­ston Bai­ley. And he is cur­rent­ly work­ing on a Su­per Blue (Austin Lyons) col­lec­tion.

“As Trinida­di­ans, we like to wait un­til peo­ple die to give them their flow­ers. I want to give him (Su­per Blue) his while he is still with us.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the brand car­ries a Saint col­lec­tion, which he said is the mes­sen­ger of God.

“So that’s ba­si­cal­ly like with the an­gel num­bers that peo­ple have. That is more of a re­minder of pur­pose, in­spired by be­lief that every per­son car­ries a greater call­ing than them­selves.”

But, Ser­rette ex­plained, he doesn’t just pull ran­dom pho­tos from on­line and prints on his prod­ucts. As a cre­ative, he has to get in­spi­ra­tions from his de­signs.

“I have to feel like I could make it come to life.”

He said the name of the brand it­self is a re­flec­tion of him and his watch words – self-aware, cal­cu­lat­ed and el­e­vat­ed.

“The ‘fly’ rep­re­sents self-ex­pres­sion. I’ve al­ways be­lieved that the way you dress is an ex­ten­sion of who you are, and look­ing good isn’t about im­press­ing oth­ers; it’s about ex­press­ing your­self with con­fi­dence, cre­ativ­i­ty and in­ten­tion. And when peo­ple hear ‘young’ they will think about age. But it’s not re­al­ly about age, it’s about the mind­set; it rep­re­sents am­bi­tion, in­no­va­tion and the en­er­gy to cre­ate your own name.”

He said the “gen­tle­man” part of the name rep­re­sents how he was raised; on a foun­da­tion of self-re­spect, in­tegri­ty, dis­ci­pline and class. But, he added, that “gen­tle­man” al­so car­ries an­oth­er mean­ing.

“Gen­tle­man, for me, is about char­ac­ter, your con­fi­dence and your iden­ti­ty – all of which women have too. So I al­so do ap­par­el for fe­males. I have ladies cropped tops, cropped hood­ies, hats and tank tops.”

Even af­ter ten years, the 36-year-old Mor­vant res­i­dent said, he is still learn­ing to grow and get­ting to un­der­stand the busi­ness in which he has in­vest­ed over $15,000 and count­less hours of time and en­er­gy.

“This brand is for my fu­ture kids and my grand­chil­dren. The aim is to be an es­tab­lished name, not just in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Caribbean, but in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. I want to get a store­front in the near fu­ture, and I al­so want to work to­wards get­ting a fac­to­ry be­cause I want to do my own print­ing. I have al­ready start­ed to buy equip­ment to do screen print­ing.”