There are some people who just ooze style and class and designer Patricia Coates is one.
Pat Coates, as she is well known, however, does not introduce herself as a designer, though there is no doubt that she is one. Her clothes, most of which are her own creations, just set her apart from what is normally seen on the streets of Georgetown.
As such it comes as no surprise that she is sometimes described as creating a “legacy” with her creations, which we must admit is not everybody’s cup of tea but when worn by a woman makes her look like a ‘woman of substance.’
When The Scene caught up with the local designing icon (she hates that description) what was surprising was that the woman is not one of many words. Se is not too keen on interviews and would rather speak through her designs. But while she acknowledged she is a quiet person she added “I am quiet until I get on the other side.”
According to Pat what designers do is what they visualise and it is all about who they want to dress.
“For me I like the classic look. I like women to feel empowered in their clothes more than exposing themselves or just being a sex symbol…,” Pat says. However, she did say that should a client request something revealing then she has no qualms about making it for them.
Pat focuses a lot on cocktail and evening gowns rather than casual clothing.
And she shared her pain at what she described as Guyanese losing their “sense of dress… Because when you look at a woman going to a function wearing a [very expensive dress] and …at her side her husband or escort is dressed in something he should have been going to the supermarket with.
“I also see people going to functions, you know like fiftieth birthday parties… in the past people would be well dressed and now you see people wearing outfits like they are going for afternoon strolls. Weddings have dropped too… It is very sad… I think we were once the top dressed women in the Caribbean but now we have just lost it,” she said with a sad smile.
But she noted that people are going for cheaper outfits, which she admits is economical. But she stressed that what they don’t understand “quality is quality and when you wear a $2 top it looks and fits like a $2 top as opposed to a $500 top.”
‘Not today, tomorrow’
Pat was a teacher for some years and then she went into the private sector before making designing her career.
It was the scenario of being tired of being told by an older cousin who sewed to wait for her clothing that forced her into trying her own things.
“It was wanting to get something done and you have to hear not today tomorrow… one day I just decided I didn’t want to hear that anymore…. So I took the cloth, spread it on my grandmother’s floor, visualising the things that my cousin did and I cut and I started to sew, that was my first dress and it was a shift dress,” Coates said.
She was a teenager at the time.
But even though she sewed for herself for a number of years it was several years after working at a private company that she finally decided to make designing a career. In fact she has only being designing in earnest for two decades but there is no doubt that she has stamped her authority on local designing.
She told The Scene that during the years after she made her first dress she “developed a flair for designing after looking at clothes in the stores and saying they could have done this or that and always sketching…”
And as she sketched and made her dresses there were a few disasters in the trial and error period such as hand painting her dress with “house paint.”
“…I could remember hand painting a dress to go to a staff party and I didn’t know about fabric paint and I used the house paint and when I was finished the dress was stiff like cardboard. But I wore it because it looked pretty and I don’t want to boast but it was voted the best dress of the party,” she said with a small laugh.
The first person to wear one of her designs was a 15-year-old contestant in the Miss Queen’s College beauty pageant.
“From that year I was always the number one designer for high school pageants,” she recalled but it took a misunderstanding with the company she worked with to propel her into making designing a career.
‘Challenging’
Her move into the designing world was anything but easy. As a matter of fact she described it as challenging “because you know when working for a company you know your cheque is there at the end of the month but when you are working for yourself you are not too sure…”
“I remember getting up five o’clock in the morning trying to put things together, it wasn’t easy and then I was a single parent.”
And like many parents Pat had to deviate a little from talking about herself and designing to focus on her son. She reveals that she made a sacrifice by sending him abroad when he was 15 and today “I am so proud because he is the assistant vice-president of the company he works with.” And she is also the proud grandmother of two.
Back to speaking about herself, Pat said initially she did make some money from designing but as it is right now there is not much money coming in from her creations.
So why does she do it?
“I love it,” she said quickly.
She is also at an stage in her life where she wants to do what she loves and she is not one to sit around and do nothing as a matter of fact she would pine away.
She still has her clients for whom she sews but for her it is a case of dreaming to do so much and never really attaining that dream.
“I can’t sew a top for $1500… The material alone would cost that and then the time I have to put in,” Pat said.
Stifling
Pat would not encourage anyone to make designing their career locally because according to her as a designer you are stifled as people do not believe in local designs and would rather pay more for a foreign outfit. “You have to get the people who know you and who like you to come to you but for you to go out there and try to make it, it is not worth it.”
But on the flip side Pat knows it is not easy to make it in the designing field abroad because local designers are not schooled. “We here… we just use the term designer as far as I am concerned we are crafts people because actually designers… they are schooled… I would hardly introduce myself as a fashion designer because in the designing field you have to know fabric. There is a lot that goes with it. It is not just picking up cloth and cutting it. And all of us going into somebody’s book and taking something from somebody and then you call yourself a big fashion designer.”
But she did admit that locals do come up with some great designs.
Pat said most times she gets a design for an outfit when she sees her fabric or sometimes she even dreams of what she wants to make when she goes to bed thinking about an outfit that just has to be made.
She is modest about it but shared with The Scene that Guyanese member of the British House of Lords, Baroness Valerie Amos sent her a magazine in which she was rated as one of the best dressed women among 100 women and the outfit that she was pictured in was one Pat had fashioned.
While she did not have any formal training, Pat said she paid attention to many persons who sewed and she observed the pride they took in their work.
“The [designers] are not taking their time… They are not using the proper iron to iron the clothing, they are not finishing the clothing properly,” she said adding that they should take more pride in their clothing.
She even found this with some designers who were part of the Fashion Weekend runway show as many of the outfits, were unfinished when they were modelled. “I find neatness is not a criterion in this country and that is sad.
“I know I can boast and I can brag that you can line up all the designers on the road and you can identify a Pat Coates design because I would take extra time and do my work. I am not a person to look at the big money. I look at the finished outfit. The young designers’ concepts might be good but their finish is bad.”
Pat was a part of the first Fashion Weekend and while she invested more money than she had wanted to she said the experience was worth it. However, she said the producers should ensure that the designers present well finished pieces.
For now Pat is going to continue doing what she likes best, designing and just taking life one day at a time. She is also willing to offer help to anyone who is in need and seeks her out. (samantha_alleyne2000@yahoo.com)
