Er­line An­drews

Ear­li­er this year, for­mer Miss T&T Danielle Jones-Hunte was mid-way through a three-month pro­fes­sion­al so­journ in Mum­bai, In­dia, when she fell ill. A bout of dysen­tery, which co­in­cid­ed with chick­en pox, land­ed her in the hos­pi­tal for eight days.

"I was there for the mon­soon sea­son when the floods came, tak­ing all that hap­pens in In­dia to the crops, and I like sal­ads–so there you go," Jones-Hunte re­called in a re­cent in­ter­view.

But as some­times hap­pens in life, the un­pleas­ant de­tour got her to a good place.

Her hus­band Quin­cy came to vis­it and they spent a cou­ple of week­ends tour­ing Jaipur, known as the Pink City be­cause that's the colour of many build­ings there. The cou­ple vis­it­ed fab­ric stores that had their goods stacked al­most 20 feet in­to the air, Jones-Hunte said.

"You walk in­to these shops and they turn on the lights–be­cause they're very en­er­gy-con­scious in In­dia–and the first thing that hits you even be­fore the lights is the colour and the vi­brant prints," she said.

It was in one of these stores that some­thing that had been to the back of Jones-Hunte's mind for years came to the front. Jones-Hunte, who placed fifth in the 2004 Miss Uni­verse com­pe­ti­tion in Equador and has since mod­elled and ap­peared on the cov­er of mag­a­zines, want­ed to try cre­at­ing de­signs rather than just wear­ing them.

The moun­tains of colour­ful fab­ric act­ed like a muse.

"I felt this is it. I would like to take some of this home, and I am go­ing to do this fash­ion line," said Jones-Hunte. "I de­signed my first shirt stand­ing in one of those stores in In­dia and the in­cred­i­ble tai­lors there put it to­geth­er."

Jones-Hunte is prepar­ing to launch her col­lec­tion of men's shirts and leather hand­bags on Oc­to­ber 1. The la­bel will be called Hunt­ed, a name de­rived from com­bin­ing Jones-Hunte's mar­ried name with the let­ter at the start of her first name. The shirts and hand­bags will be sold at Home, the bou­tique in St Clair run by Anya Ay­oung-Chee, who is al­so a for­mer Miss T&T turned fash­ion de­sign­er.

Oth­er ex­pe­ri­ences and ob­ser­va­tions in In­dia in­spired Hunt­ed.

"Every man in In­dia–whether you live in the slums of Dhar­avi or in the amaz­ing high-ris­es that dot the Mum­bai sky­line–every man wears a shirt. They don't wear 'juh-zees'," said Jones-Hunte, pro­nounc­ing the word "jer­seys" derog­a­tive­ly. "(Every man in In­dia) wants to be a dis­tin­guished gen­tle­man, and I said if I am go­ing to do this fash­ion thing I want to start with men's fash­ion."

Jones-Hunte de­scribed the line as "mixed and match prints, em­broi­dered-edge shirts with a mod­ern ur­ban twist". The col­lec­tion was al­so in­flu­enced by a va­ca­tion Jones-Hunte had in Cu­ba this year.

"I feel like it's Cu­ba meets In­dia here in Trinidad," she said of the line. The hand­bags are hand­made in Dhar­avi, a place fa­mous for its de­pic­tion in the hit film Slum­dog Mil­lion­aire and al­so for its leather goods.

It isn't Jones-Hunte's first en­tre­pre­neur­ial ven­ture. She co-owns Hair It Is–a hair ex­ten­sions and prod­ucts store in Wood­brook. But Hunt­ed is dif­fer­ent. These are prod­ucts she cre­at­ed.

"I am so used to be­ing on the PR side or the mod­el­ling side of it. I can sell for oth­er peo­ple, but the con­fi­dence of your own cre­ativ­i­ty is a lit­tle hard­er to get out," she said. "The fear in my heart of putting these on dis­play...It feels like, OK. Would peo­ple ac­cept it?"

Al­though Jones-Hunte is pri­mar­i­ly known for be­ing a beau­ty queen, she's shown abil­i­ty in many oth­er fields. She has an un­der­grad­u­ate de­gree in en­vi­ron­men­tal stud­ies from Flori­da In­ter­na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty. Af­ter in­tern­ing at the EMA, where she par­tic­i­pat­ed in com­mu­ni­ty out­reach, she de­cid­ed to pur­sue com­mu­ni­ca­tions at post­grad­u­ate lev­el in Howard Uni­ver­si­ty, where she lec­tured for a year in pub­lic speak­ing.

All this was be­fore the then 26-year-old be­came Miss T&T in 2004. For the past eight years, she's been in­volved in cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

It's been a chal­lenge, she said, rec­on­cil­ing her pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer with the pub­lic's as­so­ci­a­tion of her as Miss T&T.

"Once a beau­ty queen al­ways a beau­ty queen," she said. "I re­mem­ber be­ing on a job in­ter­view once–the on­ly job I in­ter­viewed for and I didn't get–(the in­ter­view­er re­marked), 'I don't see Miss T&T on your re­sume.' And be­ing the quick-wit­ted per­son I can be–which is al­so a pro and a con–I said, 'My mas­ter's de­gree is there though.

"I can look back and un­der­stand where they were go­ing," she said. "It's a la­bel that stays with you for­ev­er, so you need to ap­pre­ci­ate that and un­der­stand it."

Over­all the pageant ex­pe­ri­ence has been in­valu­able. Jones-Hunte still has the sash and the dress she wore from the open­ing seg­ment of the Miss Uni­verse com­pe­ti­tion.

"I'll nev­er for­get that night," she said. "And what I learned about fash­ion, me­dia, stage pro­duc­tion and event pro­duc­tion from go­ing to Miss Uni­verse will nev­er be for­got­ten and it's very much a part of who I am. I think it made me a bet­ter pro­fes­sion­al to­day."

�2 More in­fo: vimeo.com/hunt­ed.