Like the rest of the na­tion, we join in con­grat­u­lat­ing T&T's for­mer Miss Uni­verse con­tes­tant, Anya Ay­oung-Chee, who emerged as the win­ner of Sea­son 9 of the hit Amer­i­can re­al­i­ty tele­vi­sion se­ries, Project Run­way, on Thurs­day night. Ms Ay­oung-Chee's achieve­ment is even more re­mark­able giv­en the fact that she on­ly start­ed sewing four months be­fore the se­ries-which fo­cus­es on fash­ion de­sign-be­gan record­ing, ac­cord­ing to her own com­ments that have been wide­ly re­port­ed in the US me­dia. To put her ac­com­plish­ment in per­spec­tive, she was re­quired to go up against 15 oth­er con­tes­tants to cre­ate the most at­trac­tive and ap­peal­ing clothes in a com­pe­ti­tion with re­stric­tions of time, ma­te­ri­als and theme.

What she was lack­ing in sewing skills, she made up for with a nat­ur­al flair for de­sign, cool­ness and con­fi­dence in the pres­sure-cook­er en­vi­ron­ment of the re­al­i­ty se­ries and her bub­bly, Trinida­di­an per­son­al­i­ty. In emerg­ing ahead of her com­pe­ti­tion, Ms Ay­oung-Chee over­came the ad­ver­si­ty which sur­round­ed her in 2009, which was ca­pa­ble of killing a less ir­re­press­ible spir­it than hers. Al­though she did not in­vent a cure for can­cer, cre­ate a mo­bile hand-held de­vice that rev­o­lu­tionis­es com­mu­ni­ca­tion, pro­duce a body of lit­er­a­ture that daz­zles with its orig­i­nal­i­ty or sing a best-sell­ing song, Ms Ay­oung-Chee still man­aged to cast a pos­i­tive, in­ter­na­tion­al spot­light on T&T in an era in which most of the at­ten­tion has been neg­a­tive.

It is for the Gov­ern­ment, and Ms Ay­oung-Chee her­self, to find a way to lever­age that spot­light-which will soon turn to oth­er is­sues, ideas and star­lets-to kick-start the lo­cal fash­ion in­dus­try. Is­su­ing a state­ment from Perth, Aus­tralia, where he is at­tend­ing the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, Stephen Cadiz, showed that he un­der­stands what is re­quired when he said: "Fash­ion is a key pil­lar of our di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion plan and this gov­ern­ment is ful­ly com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that there is sus­tained growth and de­vel­op­ment. We are com­mit­ted to cre­at­ing a suit­able en­vi­ron­ment which will fos­ter, nur­ture and har­ness the cre­ativ­i­ty of our peo­ple to en­sure its trans­for­ma­tion in­to a boom­ing in­dus­try."

In a speech at the 2010 Trinidad and To­ba­go Fash­ion Week, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "...We can do more I be­lieve to en­sure that the right in­cen­tives and av­enues are put in place to stim­u­late the in­dus­try and help it to gain the in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion it de­serves and for which so many of you work so dili­gent­ly."

These are nice-sound­ing and ap­pro­pri­ate words but, as a coun­try, we are not short of those. Where we have been found lack­ing is in trans­lat­ing the nice-sound­ing words in­to a busi­ness plan and trans­form­ing the busi­ness plan in­to a plan of ac­tion, which will bring to­geth­er the ex­perts in the field, with just-in-time ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing, mar­ket­ing, lo­gis­tics and brand ex­per­tise, all wrapped to­geth­er by ap­pro­pri­ate as­sis­tance from the Gov­ern­ment or a gov­ern­ment agency. Oth­er coun­tries have man­aged to trans­form cot­tage in­dus­tries in­to bil­lion-dol­lar busi­ness­es by dint of col­lab­o­ra­tion, en­tre­pre­neur­ship and the right amount of gov­ern­ment in­cen­tives. Here's hop­ing Ms Ay­oung-Chee's suc­cess will spur T&T in that di­rec­tion.