Ja­nine Charles-Far­ray

As a part of the cel­e­bra­tion of UTT Fash­ion Week 2015, the five top fash­ion stu­dents of the 2015 grad­u­at­ing class of Caribbean Acad­e­my of Fash­ion and De­sign (CAFD) shared their sto­ries af­ter four years of fash­ion study at UTT.Be­fore en­ter­ing the CAFD, 31-year-old Pau­lene Den­nis was a self-taught seam­stress with 15 years' ex­pe­ri­ence hav­ing learned the trade through prac­tice and read­ing draft­ing books.

How­ev­er, she frus­trat­ed with what she per­ceived to be the stig­ma at­tached to the role."I don't like the word seam­stress any­more," she said. "It's al­most de­grad­ing.""I say that be­cause of the men­tal­i­ty sur­round­ing it. Peo­ple who go by a seam­stress do so large­ly to get some­thing cheap­er than in the store even though the qual­i­ty from a seam­stress should re­al­ly cost more, be­cause it is ba­si­cal­ly be­spoke," she lament­ed.

Den­nis saw the CAFD fash­ion pro­gramme as a chance to up­grade her skills and de­mand the prices and re­spect she thought she de­served as a pro­fes­sion­al.Shur­land Pasea, a self-de­scribed "born tai­lor" agreed en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly with Den­nis."I've been a tai­lor for over 20 years and if I was still do­ing tai­lor­ing now, I would have prob­a­bly stopped do­ing it."

Work­ing out of his work­shop in Five Rivers, Arou­ca, Pasea was a tai­lor by pro­fes­sion for both ladies and men."Peo­ple don't have re­spect for the skill and the qual­i­ty of work at all," he added. "I ac­tu­al­ly think tai­lor­ing is a dy­ing trade."Dur­ing his ca­reer, Pasea who ad­mit­ted to get­ting bored with tai­lor­ing, at­tend­ed Farah's Dress­mak­ing and De­sign school.

Years lat­er, he saw the CAFD Fash­ion pro­gramme ad­ver­tised and reg­is­tered im­me­di­ate­ly."The fash­ion in­dus­try has a lot more to of­fer than tai­lor­ing and seam­stress work and when I looked at run­way shows, I knew that there were a num­ber of things I could not do un­less I learned the art of drap­ing."

Ga­viann Mitchell of Lam­beau, To­ba­go al­so grew up around sewing and plot­ted a de­ter­mined course to­ward her dream of fash­ion de­sign. First, lim­it­ed by the cur­ricu­lum at her school at Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary, she could not pur­sue Cloth­ing and Tex­tiles as a sub­ject.Then, straight out of school, she at­tend­ed Trinizeu­la Col­lege, To­ba­go for a year to do a City and Guilds course in sewing from an in­sti­tute in the UK.

"In the end I was so dis­ap­point­ed and dis­cour­aged be­cause they gave us the wrong syl­labus and had to scrap the en­tire course. I was 16 at the time."I was en­cour­aged to get back to my goal. When I saw the re­quire­ments, I on­ly had the CXC qual­i­fi­ca­tions. So I did two YTEPP cours­es in tai­lor­ing and dress mak­ing and I at­tend­ed the 48-hour to­tal draw­ing class with Tom­ley Roberts, an artist and a teacher in To­ba­go."

Re­nee Williams, make-up artist and Car­ni­val cos­tume de­sign­er is a US cit­i­zen born in Mi­a­mi to Tri­ni par­ents, who moved to Trinidad many years ago with her fam­i­ly.At Holy Name Con­vent, Port-of-Spain, Williams dis­cov­ered her tal­ent as an art stu­dent and fo­cused al­most ex­clu­sive­ly on its pur­suit.

Af­ter school, she con­sid­ered sev­er­al in­ter­ests in­clud­ing culi­nary arts, but fi­nal­ly set­tled on make-up artistry af­ter her moth­er en­cour­aged her to go on a make-up short course."I re­alised I was good at make up be­cause it in­cor­po­rates draw­ing the fa­cial struc­ture, and I mixed colours well."Williams pur­sued make up for a while and dur­ing this time, she de­vel­oped a cus­tomer re­la­tion­ship with CAFD alum­ni de­sign­er Syn­ovia Fran­cis, from whom she learned about the UTT fash­ion pro­gramme and the sketch­ing for de­sign process.

Williams was even­tu­al­ly en­cour­aged by her fa­ther to con­sid­er en­ter­ing the CAFD pro­gramme to in­crease her val­ue as a make-up artist by ac­quir­ing ad­di­tion­al skills which could be used in the gen­er­al beau­ty in­dus­try."I didn't know how to sew, and I didn't know any­thing about fash­ion," she laughed.

"But my Dad said that since I al­ready work in the cre­ative field, I could en­hance my skills and get peo­ple to hire me. Like, if I'm at a pho­to­shoot, I'm not just a make-up artist, I know how to hem some­thing or take in a gar­ment. I could def­i­nite­ly in­crease my val­ue, so I was okay with en­ter­ing the pro­gramme."

Kaleen Sanois, is an­oth­er stu­dent with strong fam­i­ly ties to tai­lor­ing through her fa­ther and grand­fa­ther. A grad­u­ate of South East Port-of-Spain, Sanois al­ways liked sewing. Dur­ing the last few years of sec­ondary school, Sanois took up sewing more fre­quent­ly, es­pe­cial­ly for her friends through bold ex­per­i­men­ta­tion, tri­al and er­ror and in­stinct. It was her moth­er who even­tu­al­ly sug­gest­ed the UTT CAFD pro­gramme and got Sanois in­ter­est­ed.

In spite of her suc­cess in get­ting ac­cept­ed to the CAFD, Sanois re­flect­ed on her less-fo­cused mo­ments, specif­i­cal­ly those just pri­or to en­ter­ing the pro­gramme, when post-sec­ondary school par­ty­ing in­ter­fered with her abil­i­ty to se­cure pass­es on her year one and year two cours­es."I failed prob­a­bly four cours­es in my first CAFD se­mes­ter," she re­called.

How­ev­er, Sanois was able to re­cov­er. The turn­ing point, she ac­knowl­edged, was in com­par­ing her­self to her class­mates."It was in the sec­ond half of my sec­ond year, I re­alised that, I don't know any­thing and I need­ed to get it to­geth­er. I didn't want to be the one black sheep in the class that's fail­ing every­thing, for no rea­son."Sanois even­tu­al­ly be­gan ex­celling in her third and fourth years at CAFD and is now one of the top five stu­dents of the grad­u­at­ing class.