She was among the 11 stu­dents who grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T's Caribbean Acad­e­my of Fash­ion De­sign on June 22. Ge­nieve Prescod is a young woman with a pas­sion for fash­ion.

Over the past four years, Prescod and the oth­er stu­dents pur­sued stud­ies in the Bach­e­lor of Fine Arts De­gree. At the grad­u­a­tion, each stu­dent was re­quired to present a mi­ni col­lec­tion in which they un­veiled six con­cepts be­fore the large au­di­ence. The event was apt­ly ti­tled Be­yond Lim­its.Prescod's col­lec­tion was Tene­bras Cir­cum.She lat­er spoke to Sun­day Vibe and shared her pas­sion, vi­sion and mis­sion for the lo­cal fash­ion in­dus­try.

Q: What or who made you study de­sign?

A: I've al­ways had an in­ter­est in artis­tic and cre­ative fields of study. Of all the var­i­ous cre­ative fields, fash­ion de­sign was the most ap­peal­ing to me.

How would you de­scribe your de­signs?

My de­signs are edgy and unique with a so­phis­ti­cat­ed touch, and at­ten­tion to de­tail.

Where do you find your in­spi­ra­tion?

I find in­spi­ra­tion in every­thing, but I am main­ly in­spired by the Vic­to­ri­an-era fash­ion and Japan­ese street fash­ion, such as the "vi­su­al kei" and "loli­ta" styles.

Do you have a style/fash­ion icon?

Al­though I do not re­al­ly look to any par­tic­u­lar per­son as a style/fash­ion icon that I would em­u­late or draw in­spi­ra­tion from, I do ad­mire the per­son­al style of Amy Lee of Evanes­cence.

Are there de­sign­ers that in­flu­ence your style?

Seth Aaron Hen­der­son and Alexan­der.

What is your ap­proach to a col­lec­tion?

In­spi­ra­tion! Re­search! Brain­storm! When I am in­spired by some­thing, I re­search it thor­ough­ly, col­lect­ing in­for­ma­tion and ref­er­ence pic­tures. Then, us­ing what I have learned, I en­vi­sion a fash­ion sto­ry based on that in­spi­ra­tion and brain­storm var­i­ous de­signs un­til I come up with the de­sign el­e­ments I think suit the sto­ry best. Once I have found the el­e­ments I like best for that sto­ry, I then work to­wards de­sign­ing a co­he­sive col­lec­tion based on those el­e­ments to por­tray the sto­ry of my in­spi­ra­tion.

What are your favourite colours, colour com­bi­na­tions and tex­tiles?

I al­ways get teased about pa­tri­o­tism for this, but my ab­solute favourite colour com­bi­na­tion is red, black and white. My favourite in­di­vid­ual colours would be black, red, pink and pur­ple. As for fab­rics, I have an in­tense love for leather or any­thing re­sem­bling leather. I al­so fall eas­i­ly in love with any­thing that has a hound­stooth print, pat­tern or tex­ture.

How do you de­fine your per­son­al sense of style?

My per­son­al sense of style is some­what goth­ic, but al­so fun and flir­ty. My style re­flects the var­i­ous sides of my per­son­al­i­ty, and I of­ten dress to re­flect my mood.

New to the busi­ness, what mo­ti­vates you?

I am main­ly mo­ti­vat­ed by the abil­i­ty to cre­ate. It's an amaz­ing feel­ing to en­vi­sion some­thing and watch it come to life be­fore your eyes as you work to­ward cre­at­ing some­thing new that no one else has cre­at­ed. It's an even more amaz­ing feel­ing when those cre­ations are ac­knowl­edged and ap­pre­ci­at­ed by oth­ers.

To your mind, what are the most im­por­tant el­e­ments to con­sid­er when it comes to de­sign­ing?

Orig­i­nal­i­ty and wear­a­bil­i­ty! When I de­sign some­thing, I'm al­ways try­ing to find ways to make it dif­fer­ent to what's al­ways avail­able. In that pur­suit, how­ev­er, I tend to go over­board at times, so I al­ways try to re­mem­ber that even though I want the gar­ments I'm cre­at­ing to be orig­i­nal works of art, they are still meant to be worn and as such, they need to be func­tion­al gar­ments, as well as art.

What is the next step for you?

My next step would be work­ing to im­prove my skills while de­sign­ing cus­tom or­ders. I al­so in­tend on look­ing in­to a fash­ion in­tern­ship ei­ther lo­cal­ly or abroad to do more hands-on learn­ing with­in the fash­ion in­dus­try.