Mark Lyn­der­say

On Au­gust 9, K2K Al­liance and Part­ners, the band de­signed by Kathy and Karen Nor­man, in­tro­duced their sec­ond ef­fort, The Hu­man Race, at Queen's Hall. The event, in prin­ci­ple a band launch, bore few of the hall­marks of the cel­e­bra­tions we've come to un­der­stand as an in­tro­duc­tion of cos­tumes from a Car­ni­val band. Billed as "An El­e­gant Evening of Fash­ion and Cock­tails" with a dress code and some­thing of a se­vere man­ner, it was, in struc­ture, more ob­vi­ous­ly a fash­ion show, pre­sent­ed as an as­pi­ra­tion to high­er cul­ture and in­tent. If that seems a bit snob­bish, well it's about time some­one hon­est­ly put some thing a bit pompous and pre­sump­tu­ous back in­to Car­ni­val or at the very least, some­thing that be­trays a unique per­spec­tive and point of view on the idea of hav­ing a large group of peo­ple pre­tend to be some­thing else. The Nor­man sis­ters seem quite keen to con­tin­ue do­ing so af­ter their de­but band this year and re­main un­de­terred in their com­mit­ment to of­fer cos­tum­ing that's dra­mat­i­cal­ly cut, pre­cise­ly ren­dered and un­for­giv­ing in its lack of in­ter­est in pro­lif­er­a­tions of bead­ing and feath­ers. That's not to say the work is spare. The Hu­man Race spared no glit­ter in its en­thu­si­asm to shine and lit­tle froufrou in putting flounce in­to skirts.

If the mu­sic in­tro­duc­ing the cos­tumes at the event was very much the type of racy tech­no and in­dus­tri­al dance mu­sic that's be­come com­mon­place as ac­com­pa­ni­ment­to cos­tume ap­pear­ances at a band launch, the stark light­ing, lan­guid walks on­stage and smoky glances from the mod­els wear­ing the cos­tumes were very much the stuff of high fash­ion. In the ar­chi­tec­ture of the band, each sec­tion of­fers three in­ter­pre­ta­tions of the cos­tume style and mas­quer­aders will be choos­ing to be a Thor­ough­bred, Jock­ey or On­look­er (al­so de­scribed as Crowd and Spec­ta­tor) in each sec­tion of the band. The nu­ances in the cos­tum­ing with­in each sec­tion prove quite clever. Thor­ough­bred cos­tume ver­sions tend­ed to show more skin in their de­sign, em­pha­sis­ing the long, sleek legs of the night's mod­els. Jock­ey ver­sions of the cos­tumes gen­tly cov­ered the mod­el's legs with skirts and wraps. Some skirts drag in­sou­ciant­ly along the ground, while the mi­cro-mi­ni skirts of the Vi­sion­ary sec­tion are prob­a­bly the most ap­peal­ing thing I've seen a woman plan to wear for Car­ni­val in decades. While there are some love­ly cos­tumes that might ap­peal to a mas­quer­ad­er of rough­ly the same age as the young mod­els parad­ing K2K's cos­tume that night, it's al­so clear that over­all, this isn't a jam, wine and back-back band.

The cos­tumes are de­signed for wear­ing, parad­ing and even a lit­tle dig­ni­fied danc­ing, but jam two of them to­geth­er and you'll prob­a­bly re­de­fine the term wardrobe mal­func­tion. The Nor­man sis­ters are us­ing the term "cou­ture" to de­scribe their work in Car­ni­val. It's a term nor­mal­ly used for cus­tom-fit­ted cloth­ing from an ex­clu­sive cloth­ier and their ef­forts to make the term work in the con­text of Car­ni­val are, by turns, ad­mirable, as­ton­ish­ing and puz­zling. There are bold de­sign cut­aways in The Hu­man Race, some of them en­ter­tain­ing­ly whim­si­cal, no­tably in some the men's Jock­ey cos­tumes, which are miss­ing en­tire backs and halves. Half of the Imag­i­na­tion cos­tume is dar­ing­ly ab­sent, sliced away along the length of the mod­el in the de­sign. Padding el­e­ments nor­mal­ly used to shape hips and shoul­ders be­come shaped and dec­o­rat­ed ar­mour plates, in­vert­ing func­tion in­to ag­gres­sive style. The band suc­cess­ful­ly hit the road for the first time in 2012 and made quite an im­pres­sion cross­ing the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah stage, but the buzz about the mas­quer­ad­er ex­pe­ri­ence sug­gests that for 2013 there will have to be more em­pha­sis on cus­tomer com­fort and con­ve­nience, not sim­ply as a sales tool but more as an ab­solute ne­ces­si­ty. At least half of these cos­tumes make use of long flow­ing skirt forms, some full and ruf­fled, oth­ers ad­ven­tur­ous­ly al­ter­nat­ing full pleat­ing with trans­par­ent net­ting. Men's cos­tumes seem per­func­to­ry com­pared to the or­nate de­tail and dra­mat­ic de­sign of the fe­male choic­es and the band seems set to con­tin­ue as a state­ment by a cer­tain kind of ma­ture woman about style, fash­ion, cos­tum­ing and a pres­ence on the road at Car­ni­val.

The dra­mat­ic pre­sen­ta­tion of the cos­tumes came to an odd­ly con­fused end with the in­tro­duc­tion of the pop­u­lar rap­so group 3Canal, whose up-tem­po mes­sage of good vi­bra­tions over­turned the brood­ing mood and left the mod­els on stage with a rad­i­cal change in tone they didn't seem pre­pared for. Kathy and Karen Nor­man then ap­peared with di­rec­tor Mervyn de Goeas to much ap­plause and even more stag­ing con­fu­sion, be­fore 3Canal reap­peared for an­oth­er up­beat clos­ing song, for no the­mat­ic rea­son that I could di­vine. It will, over­all, be re­mem­bered be as a point­ed­ly brief, briskly chore­o­graphed show that suc­cess­ful­ly in­tro­duced the band as a col­lec­tion of bold de­signs, while leav­ing the con­cept un­der­pin­ning them still quite opaque. A sta­pled-to­geth­er col­lec­tion of let­ter-sized print­outs giv­en to the press an­swered lit­tle. The show was ap­par­ent­ly arranged, ac­cord­ing to this guide, in­to three "clus­ters" with an ac­com­pa­ny­ing nar­ra­tive full of headache-in­duc­ing horse-race metaphors that made lit­tle sense. Bet­ter to set aside all that and ap­pre­ci­ate the cos­tumes as both works of bold fash­ion and ad­ven­tur­ous cos­tum­ing, then, and on those terms, the sto­ry of the Nor­mans' Hu­man Race seems promis­ing in­deed.