Ja­nine Charles-Far­ray

Days be­fore their se­nior the­sis fash­ion show, some of the top stu­dents of the 2016 UTT Caribbean Acad­e­my of Fash­ion and De­sign (CAFD) de­gree pro­gramme dis­cussed with the Sun­day Arts Sec­tion their four-year de­gree ex­pe­ri­ence.

Sin­gle moth­er and en­tre­pre­neur Fan­ny Mur­ray was a tai­lor work­ing in a small home busi­ness when she came across an ad­ver­tise­ment in the pa­pers about the CAFD.

"I'm a sin­gle mom and I work for my­self, so I had a lot of chal­lenges both fi­nan­cial­ly and with mak­ing arrange­ments for my child when I had class­es, plus trans­porta­tion from Mara­bel­la in South.

"But when I start some­thing, I don't quit. I pre­fer to see it through un­til the end. I feel great to be fin­ish­ing in a few days. I am count­ing down the time," she said with a laugh.

The stu­dents agreed that it was an as­set to have pri­or knowl­edge of sewing be­fore en­ter­ing the pro­gramme, even though CAFD does not make it a strict re­quire­ment.

Shahi­dah Carr had ear­ly mem­o­ries of sewing and as a child, she knew how to op­er­ate in­dus­tri­al-grade sewing ma­chines; her moth­er, San­dra, owned and op­er­at­ed a de­sign school when she was very young. San­dra is a fash­ion de­sign co-or­di­na­tor in the CAFD.

"Most of what I've learned came from look­ing on at my moth­er and watch­ing as she taught her stu­dents," the younger Carr said in an email from the US. "As I got old­er, I start­ed sewing my own Is­lam­ic clothes and for my friends as well, and that's when I start­ed do­ing my own thing when it came to fash­ion."

Carr had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to hang out with the fash­ion stu­dents al­most every day af­ter school and be eas­i­ly per­suad­ed to join the pro­gramme when she was ready for ter­tiary-lev­el ed­u­ca­tion.

Marie Richard­son had spe­cif­ic goals for her uni­ver­si­ty life: leave Trinidad; go abroad; study art; suc­ceed as a vi­su­al artist. She spent a year prepar­ing her for­mal port­fo­lio and send­ing out uni­ver­si­ty ap­pli­ca­tions.She was of­fered a schol­ar­ship to St Lawrence Uni­ver­si­ty, New York; it wasn't her on­ly ac­cep­tance. Even with the schol­ar­ship, how­ev­er, Richard­son was not able to take up the of­fer be­cause of fi­nan­cial chal­lenges.

En­cour­aged by her par­ents, Richard­son elect­ed to en­ter the UTT fash­ion de­sign pro­gramme.

"I al­ways loved fash­ion. My joy in fash­ion was us­ing old clothes, re­work­ing it and turn­ing it in­to a re­al 'best' par­ty out­fit to get some­body to take a pic­ture of me and say, wow. I was al­ways in­ter­est­ed in find­ing new ways to make things in­to some­thing else."

Hav­ing grown up at the St Mary's Chil­dren's Home in Tacarigua with six oth­er sib­lings, Har­vey Robert­son fond­ly re­called sewing with re­pur­posed cloth­ing and do­nat­ed fab­ric sent to the home.

"There was a vo­ca­tion­al pro­gramme for the chil­dren of the home who were not nec­es­sar­i­ly aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly in­clined. I was go­ing to Curepe Ju­nior Sec­ondary School at the time, but be­cause my broth­er was in the sewing class, I end­ed up in the class too," he said, laugh­ing.He con­tin­ued sewing in­to his adult life, tak­ing odd jobs but nev­er re­al­ly pur­su­ing it as a pro­fes­sion–un­til he de­cid­ed to en­ter the CAFD.

Af­ter grad­u­at­ing from Mara­bel­la Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive, Rakesh Ra­moutar was swept in­to the tai­lor­ing trade through a vis­it to Per­sad Kistow's Kool Tai­lor­ing shop in Gas­par­il­lo.

"I went to the tai­lor for a pair of trousers for church and he wasn't quite fin­ished with it. I was think­ing, 'oh gosh, I wish I could sew my own clothes be­cause then I wouldn't be sit­ting down here wait­ing so long!'" he re­called.

"So I chal­lenged the tai­lor and said, 'I think I need to learn how to sew.' And he said, 'All right, I will train you.'"

Ra­moutar ap­pren­ticed with the tai­lor for a year and dis­cov­ered an ap­ti­tude for the trade, pick­ing up the skills and tech­niques faster than any oth­er trainee the tai­lor had en­coun­tered, he said.

Af­ter his time work­ing hands-on in the tai­lor­ing trade, his moth­er di­rect­ed him to the gar­ment con­struc­tion course at Ser­vol, Ch­agua­nas. From there, he earned a year's in­tern­ship at lo­cal gar­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing gi­ant Janouras. While work­ing there, he saw the ad­ver­tise­ment for the CAFD pro­gramme and shift­ed gears to­ward ex­pand­ing his knowl­edge in­to fash­ion de­sign.

"(CAFD) wasn't what I ex­pect­ed," said Ra­moutar. "I didn't know there were a lot of aca­d­e­m­ic cours­es and that was my main strug­gle. In an ex­am en­vi­ron­ment I pan­ic and don't func­tion well, but I sur­vived," he said jovial­ly.

"I must say the staff at CAFD were re­al­ly sup­port­ive. They made some changes to fa­cil­i­tate me when sit­ting in the ex­am room, like ask­ing me if I need­ed to take a break and so on."

Richard­son ex­pe­ri­enced chal­lenges of a dif­fer­ent na­ture.

"Com­ing in­to CAFD in the be­gin­ning was great for me be­cause we did a lot of foun­da­tion art cours­es, which is my forte. The core aca­d­e­m­ic cours­es that Rakesh is talk­ing about were a joy for me, it was so easy.

"How­ev­er, they came in with sewing skills, and I came in with zilch," she con­fessed. "I strug­gled, cried, I couldn't sleep. Any­thing to do with con­struc­tion was tor­ture," she said.

"The amount of things that you learn (at CAFD), they don't have time to teach you how to sew. They will try to help, but you have to take the ini­tia­tive to get it done. That's what I had to do, seek out peo­ple who were will­ing to help me."

Shahi­dah Carr wrote, "I can whole­heart­ed­ly say I love be­ing in fash­ion, and this is where I see my­self for the rest of my life." For her the­sis col­lec­tion, Carr is reimag­in­ing the acronym POW as Peace Over War.

"I'm delv­ing in­to things that af­fect peo­ple every day and cre­ate a type of 'war' for them. There are peo­ple who are at­tacked be­cause of their race or re­li­gion, teens who are bul­lied every day, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence vic­tims, can­cer sur­vivors, rape vic­tims...with my col­lec­tion, I want to say, don't give up, keep fight­ing un­til that hap­py end­ing, un­til you find that place of peace."

Mur­ray had a lot of sleep­less nights dur­ing the CAFD pro­gramme. While she came in with a sol­id back­ground in tai­lor­ing, she quick­ly re­alised that there was a dif­fer­ence be­tween the prac­ti­cal sewing tech­niques she knew and the more for­mal tech­niques she had to learn.

"You get ac­cus­tomed sewing one way, and then when you come here, they want you to sew an­oth­er way. So I had to re­learn a lot of things; it was tough. There were chal­lenges with some of the teach­ers...butting heads, you know," she said.

The col­lec­tions

The Se­nior The­sis Run­way will take place on June 5, at the Grad­u­a­tion Pavil­ion of the UTT O'Meara Cam­pus, Ari­ma. All grad­u­at­ing se­niors are re­quired to show a col­lec­tion, which will be cri­tiqued by pro­fes­sion­al de­sign­ers.Mur­ray's the­sis col­lec­tion is based on a Brazil­ian theme with the gen­res of jazz and sam­ba com­bined, ti­tled Bossa No­va en Azul.

"It means a new trend or ten­den­cy in blue. I was go­ing for a ro­man­tic theme with den­im, mesh and fab­ri­ca­tion of re­verse ap­plique with some bead­ing. I want­ed to show peo­ple that den­im is not on­ly to be stuck in work or ca­su­al clothes, you can move it in­to cou­ture.

"When I came in­to the pro­gramme it was a lot more than I ex­pect­ed," ad­mit­ted Robert­son. "It is not just a fash­ion course. It's fash­ion, aca­d­e­mics and art as well. And, wow, art is not easy," he con­fessed to chuck­les from his class­mates.

Robert­son en­joyed learn­ing about art his­to­ry, lan­guage stud­ies in Span­ish, crit­i­cal think­ing, and busi­ness and en­tre­pre­neur­ship cours­es. As a part-time stu­dent, he re­count­ed sac­ri­fices made, in­clud­ing giv­ing up week­ends for class­es or to com­plete projects. He felt that cross­ing the hur­dles spurred him to make it to his fi­nal year.

"My the­sis col­lec­tion is called I am So­ca. It's about iden­ti­fy­ing one­self and comes from my un­der­stand­ing of iden­ti­ty. I am not an African, I am not an In­di­an, I am a Trin­bag­on­ian.

"Ras Shorty I took in­flu­ences from both In­di­an and African rhythms and cre­at­ed this fu­sion of so­ca mu­sic. I want­ed to take it fur­ther and play on the in­flu­ence of mod­ern mu­sic such as pop and EDM and how these gen­res have in­flu­enced what our so­ca has be­come."

He added, "(My col­lec­tion) has leather, a lot of zip­pers, some ver­sa­til­i­ty, and it is very mix and match. For ex­am­ple, I have a jumper that can sep­a­rate in­to a short bodice and an­oth­er de­tach­ment for the pants by it­self. So I want to show off the ver­sa­til­i­ty of the gar­ments and with­in it, the in­flu­ence of mod­ern cul­ture on our so­ca mu­sic."

Richard­son went from ze­ro sewing knowl­edge to dis­cov­er­ing a nat­ur­al in­cli­na­tion to sew very dif­fi­cult ma­te­ri­als and a pen­chant for de­sign­ing com­pli­cat­ed gar­ments.

"If I'm not ex­cit­ed about what I'm do­ing, I'm not mo­ti­vat­ed to do it. So that's how I end­ed up mak­ing a col­lec­tion out of leather and plas­tic," she said.

At the se­nior the­sis show Richard­son will present her mi­ni col­lec­tion ti­tled #THEVOID. She strong­ly be­lieves her clothes are not for the av­er­age per­son, and that her fash­ion push­es the bound­aries of ready-to-wear to the ex­treme.

"(My fash­ion) is not com­fort­able. I don't think it will fit in­to reg­u­lar so­ci­ety, but that is where my ex­pe­ri­ence as a vi­su­al artist comes out in my fash­ion. I want to push the fash­ion bound­aries in Trinidad."

The col­lec­tion was in­spired by so­cial me­dia and the neg­a­tive ef­fects that it can have on the psy­che. Her col­lec­tion ex­plores vi­su­al themes as­so­ci­at­ed with nar­cis­sism, in­se­cu­ri­ty and the re­la­tion­ship be­tween so­cial me­dia, drug abuse and in­san­i­ty. #THEVOID was in­spired by the 2009 French film En­ter the Void.

Ti­tled Madam a la Mode, Ra­moutar's col­lec­tion is in­spired by the clas­sic Chanel look mar­ried with the icon­ic style of Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe. CAFD in­tro­duced Ra­moutar to drap­ing–a dras­tic de­par­ture from flat pat­tern­ing, his com­fort zone as a tai­lor. It is now fea­tured ex­clu­sive­ly in his the­sis col­lec­tion.

"I used a mix­ture of fab­rics such as tweeds and lace. So tweed rep­re­sents the Chanel side of the theme and the lace gives that soft­ness, along with el­e­ments such as high slits and deep Vs to give that Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe fin­ish," he said.