Another Trinidad church holds fashion show

Marissa Diaz modles jewelry from ShopLux.

(Trinidad Guardian) Days af­ter the con­tro­ver­sial jaw-drop­ping fash­ion show at the Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral in Port-of-Spain, an­oth­er church held a fund-rais­ing tea and fash­ion show.

But, the show was not held on the church premis­es and did not in­clude scant­i­ly-clad mod­els.

 
In­stead, the Susamachar Pres­by­ter­ian Church in San Fer­nan­do held its an­nu­al fash­ion show at Imani Hall, Omardeen’s Build­ing, Cipero Street, San Fer­nan­do. Mod­els from the House of Jacqui and even the church mem­bers pa­rad­ed most­ly con­ser­v­a­tive pieces Sat­ur­day.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Rev Kendrick Sook­nar­ine said the tea and fash­ion show was an an­nu­al event host­ed by the church to raise funds for church re­pairs. He said this show was specif­i­cal­ly be­ing held to raise funds to fix the roof of the church, which is like­ly to cost be­tween $2 to $3 mil­lion.

Com­ment­ing on last week’s fash­ion show at the An­gli­can Church, he said a church was not the place for a fash­ion show. “I be­lieve that it was not bad per se that they had a fash­ion show, we’ve al­ways had fash­ion shows, but it is that you had the fash­ion show with­in a space that was con­sid­ered to be sa­cred.”

He said the de­sign­er and the church ad­min­is­tra­tion ought to have known that they were “putting the wrong thing in that space.” How­ev­er, he said that the com­bi­na­tion of the sa­cred and pro­fane might get a de­sign­er ex­cit­ed be­cause the con­trast would stim­u­late in­ter­est and at­tract peo­ple to the event. Last week, mem­bers of the pub­lic ex­pressed out­rage when pho­tos of mod­els wear­ing re­veal­ing and sexy de­signs in­side the An­gli­can Church dur­ing Style­Week Port-of-Spain be­gan sur­fac­ing.

The An­gli­can Church has since is­sued a pub­lic apol­o­gy and ex­plained the de­sign­ers had breached their guide­lines. An­gli­can Bish­op Claude Berkley con­demned the event and promised an in­ves­ti­ga­tion would be launched. He said ap­pro­pri­ate mea­sures would be tak­en to en­sure that does not hap­pen again.