It feels so good to not wear a coat. I’m back in Guyana for a bit before I leave for my belated honeymoon. Before I came home, I made a quick pit stop in Trinidad to review Meiling’s latest collection which was inspired by The Book of Night Women, by Marlon James.
Unfortunately, I didn’t receive the show photographs so I can’t share them with you this week. Trinidad got me thinking as usual after I left though. It is undoubtedly the place in the Caribbean that has the most creative energy when it comes to fashion. That aside, it is also slightly similar to most other Caribbean countries when it comes to the designers’ work being not creatively sustainable. The only difference with Trinidad is that, the designers are better off at creating niche brands.
When I think of a designer, I think of a person, who has a stable aesthetic, but somehow manages to manipulate it show after show, ultimately giving consumers a chance to develop a style but simultaneously having them not looking the same, season after season. We have this type of designer in the Caribbean, but we also have others that I have given the following labels:]
The Stuck Record
These are the designers who found a style and stuck to it. Years will go by and you can bet your bottom dollar what the clothes will look like. This sort of designing is exciting in the beginning but gets boring after a while. These designers in most cases haven’t necessarily studied fashion design but benefited off the easy access title-grabbing career of being fashion designers through marketing themselves hard core.
The Imitators
These designers, in most times tend to be young. They understand how trends work and they capitalize off of this by giving consumers something similar in a short time frame. They tend to get settled within a niche market and become known. They have more of a chance of surviving because they have an extremely dependent market. Their work is not necessarily groundbreaking, but is relevant
The Misunderstood
These designers would be the ones who have an extremely strong aesthetic, but can’t necessarily create under the Caribbean fashion climate. You see them briefly then they disappear. The work usually comes off as misunderstood. They often end up fleeing the Caribbean as they are not willing to compromise for low prices and sacrifice quality. They believe in fashion as a form of art.
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