In the past two week, two news sto­ries have stirred the in­ter­est of Co­co Vel­vet’s cre­ative di­rec­tor Christo­pher Nathan.

On March 1, Paula Gopee-Scoon made a call for lo­cal Car­ni­val bands to con­sid­er the use of the lo­cal fash­ion in­dus­try to mass pro­duce their cos­tumes af­ter it was re­vealed that sev­er­al Car­ni­val bands ex­pe­ri­enced is­sues com­plet­ing and sup­ply­ing cos­tumes to their mas­quer­aders.

And, a few days lat­er on March 5, the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion evict­ed sev­er­al ten­ants in East Port-of-Spain as it be­gan the de­mo­li­tion of build­ings in the area as part of a plan to re­vi­talise the area.

The two is­sues struck a chord with Nathan as 18 years ago he sub­mit­ted a pro­pos­al that would have ad­dressed both is­sues.

In 2005, Nathan sub­mit­ted a pro­pos­al to es­tab­lish a fash­ion dis­trict in East Port of Spain.

The pro­pos­al was not tak­en up then. Nei­ther was it favoured on two oth­er oc­ca­sions he raised it there­after at the Min­istry of Trade and while he served on the board of Cre­ativeTT.

“It stayed on the shelf at the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try and then three years lat­er I was ap­point­ed to the board of Cre­ativeTT and again I brought up the pro­pos­al and, be­cause there was a lot of frag­men­ta­tion and pol­i­tics in the fash­ion in­dus­try at the time, I was ig­nored once more. So I spent an­oth­er year try­ing to push the fash­ion dis­trict ini­tia­tive for­ward and af­ter 12 months I de­cid­ed to fo­cus on tak­ing my work in­ter­na­tion­al­ly,” Nathan told Guardian Me­dia.

Since be­ing shunned, Nathan said he has moved to To­ba­go, where he con­tin­ued to push Co­co Vel­vet’s ex­ploits.

How­ev­er, the re­cent events spurred Nathan to push his ini­tia­tive again.

In the orig­i­nal 39-page doc­u­ment, Nathan sug­gest­ed the cre­ation of not on­ly a dis­trict in East Port-of-Spain that would en­cour­age and de­vel­op the lo­cal fash­ion in­dus­try, but al­so a strip along Dock Road where cruise ship res­i­dents would have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to shop at bou­tiques sell­ing the work of lo­cal de­sign­ers.

“I thought it would be a good op­por­tu­ni­ty to have them mar­ry that ini­tia­tive with our ini­tial ini­tia­tive to have a des­ig­nat­ed fash­ion strip with the de­sign­ers, top de­sign­ers, who would start bou­tiques there and for­eign­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who come on cruise ships and those who come for leisure strolling down Ari­api­ta Av­enue, would be able to buy de­sign­er items to car­ry back home just like it is done in Fifth Av­enue and Hol­lis Av­enue in Mi­a­mi Beach,” said Nathan.

“The sec­ond rea­son for the pro­pos­al get­ting some light is be­cause of the dra­ma in East Port-of-Spain and that’s hap­pen­ing with the evic­tion of the peo­ple in the Plan­nings and the plan for re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing East Port-of-Spain. As far as I un­der­stand, the Gov­ern­ment re­al­ly doesn’t have a plan for there.”

The cre­ation of the dis­trict there, he ar­gued would not on­ly cre­ate an area for the lo­cal fash­ion in­dus­try to thrive but would al­so cre­ate a space for work­ers to live, hence in­creas­ing the ef­fi­cien­cy in the in­dus­try.

He was adamant that this space, once it is de­vel­oped along­side the fash­ion pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T’s John Don­ald­son Cam­pus, has the ca­pac­i­ty to pro­duce cos­tumes for the large bands of Car­ni­val.

“The Sus­tain­able Gar­ment Man­u­fac­tur­ing Free Zone Dis­trict that we at Co­co Vel­vet In­ter­na­tion­al have pro­posed to the Min­istries of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, Tourism Cul­ture & the Arts is in­tend­ed to pro­vide gar­ment-man­u­fac­tur­ing scale for the pro­duc­tion of cos­tumes—swim­suits and ac­ces­sories for mas every year. It is my be­lief that band­lead­ers that host Trinidad-style car­ni­vals around the re­gion will take ad­van­tage of the man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties here in Port-of-Spain when the dis­trict is es­tab­lished.”

“We are sug­gest­ing Car­ni­val cos­tumes should be made in T&T be­cause we are the mec­ca of Car­ni­val,” said Nathan, “The fash­ion pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ty, which is called Made868, they have tremen­dous this ca­pac­i­ty.”

He how­ev­er ad­mit­ted that to achieve the lev­el of pro­duc­tion re­quired for the Car­ni­val sea­son, there was a need for the in­dus­try to be de­vel­oped fur­ther.

‘There needs to be more train­ing, for more peo­ple to learn the art of Car­ni­val cos­tume mak­ing,” he said.

The cre­ative di­rec­tor of Made868 An­na White agreed that there was po­ten­tial ca­pac­i­ty for Car­ni­val cos­tume pro­duc­tion but sim­i­lar­ly felt greater de­vel­op­ment of the in­dus­try was need­ed.

“There’s a lot of skilled and tal­ent­ed per­sons out there that al­ready pro­duce mas for mas band de­sign­ers in their lit­tle sewing shops or in their stu­dios. So I think that we have the ca­pac­i­ty to do it what we need to do is to be able to, you know, put a plat­form in place where we can reach out to this per­son to see if they’re will­ing, you know, and if it makes sense for them,” said White.

How­ev­er, she said the very is­sues which af­fect­ed mas bands this year, al­so has proven a chal­lenge to lo­cal de­sign­ers in the past.

“A lot of raw ma­te­ri­als have to be im­port­ed. And if it doesn’t get here on time, then that’s the ma­jor is­sue. So that is, to me, it’s one of the down­falls of pro­duc­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go is that raw ma­te­ri­als are scarce,’ she said, “I would like to see an out­let where the de­sign­ers them­selves can ac­tu­al­ly source raw ma­te­ri­als lo­cal­ly and not have to de­pend on im­ports. So years ago, we had an in­dus­try where we cre­at­ed cot­ton al­ready, we did our own fab­rics, and I would like to see that re­vis­it­ed. I don’t know how that is go­ing to be pos­si­ble. But I would like to see us again, cre­at­ing our own fab­rics.”

She al­so felt that the in­dus­try al­so re­quired sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment so that more de­sign­ers would be en­cour­aged to come in­to the in­dus­try and see it as a vi­able field.

“The de­sign­ers would need fi­nanc­ing, to be able to pro­duce the lines. For in­stance, at Made868, that fa­cil­i­ty is on­go­ing, it’s build­ing in that we are bring­ing in new work­ers. So we’d be able to meet the ca­pac­i­ty, a lot of de­sign­ers that want to come in­to that fa­cil­i­ty, but they don’t have the fund­ing to be able to cre­ate their lines. If there was some­thing in place for fund­ing, that would be fan­tas­tic,” said White.

Nathan did have a sug­ges­tion, he felt could help with the con­cerns raised about lim­it­ed raw ma­te­ri­als; re­cy­cling.

He said, “At the end of Trinidad Car­ni­val in Feb­ru­ary and March, the swim­suits are col­lect­ed and sort­ed as a brand in the gar­ment dis­trict. They are re-de­signed and re-en­gi­neered for To­ba­go in Oc­to­ber so that we don’t have a whole set of new sup­ply of raw ma­te­ri­als need­ed for Car­ni­val in To­ba­go, so we get to re­cy­cle the cos­tumes from Trinidad and use them for Car­ni­val in To­ba­go.”

The Co­co Vel­vet brand un­der Nathan’s stew­ard­ship has de­vel­oped an in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion for its sus­tain­able so­lu­tions, with Co­co Vel­vet In­ter­na­tion­al be­ing named the win­ner of Eth­i­cal Fi­nance 2023 Award for our Sus­tain­able Gar­ment Man­u­fac­tur­ing Free Zone Pro­pos­al for East Port-of-Spain.

White felt the re­cy­cling of ma­te­r­i­al was a fea­si­ble op­tion, as she not­ed that a lot of ma­te­r­i­al for Car­ni­val is gen­er­al­ly wast­ed.

“There’s a lot of stuff that re­mains, for in­stance, we did Mon­day wear. And we had a lot of fab­ric that re­main that we could re­cy­cle in­to brand-new cos­tumes. So I do agree with that as well,” she said.