It is quite incontestable, my philosophy on Caribbean fashion. I am exhilarated by the boundaries being pushed by our imagers and stylists. No longer are we simply copying what we see in international magazines. We are creating our style templates, indeed, influenced by global trends, but not limited to replicating what is deemed the in-thing by metropolitan cognoscenti.
For the past few decades, we have certainly unearthed our own interpretation of fashion, even ‘high fashion’. More so, we the quintessential exhibitionists with our Carnival, can teach the world a thing or two about flamboyant style.
I wish to trace, intuitively, our deviation from the acceptable global style dictates - the time when we began to claim ourselves as a Caribbean entity. Evidently, we utilise the fundamentals of clothing design as passed on to us, by all our multi-cultural influences, however, our idiosyncratic way of integrating, assimilating and mutating has given birth to a vanguard genre of world-class dimension. The deviation was, at first, deemed ‘cosquelle’, for its tendency to go against the status quo.
What might have been deemed as ‘cosquelle’ as subversively manipulated by the protagonists of the performing arts,. culture aficionados and new world artists - who migrated our sense of style to diaspora spaces. Almost irreverently, but claiming our originality which bespeaks the notion that our style began metamorphosing into a celebratory aesthetic. Professor Doctor Patricia Mohammed, Professor at Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies, celebrates this in her experimental documentary, “Coolie Pink and Green”.
Today, I showcase runway looks of Caribbean fashion designers, recently featured at the monumental showing at Carifesta, ‘Oui Papa Yo!’. They have crafted independent takes on ‘high fashion’ embellished by our biographical design narratives, resonating our regional, collective, creative energy. I hail these creatives - Claudia Pegus and Dominique La Roche of Trinidad, Esther Joseph of St Lucia and Maxi Williams of Guyana - for representing our frontier posture as style game-changers on the cusp of global recognition. Indeed our ‘cosquelle’ is becoming couture.