The 1ndi­vid­ual Aes­thet­ic is aim­ing to take his brand in­ter­na­tion­al via his spin on Par­adise.

Kee­gan Si­mon, cre­ator of the pop­u­lar lo­cal ca­su­al cloth­ing brand, told the Busi­ness Guardian that he is set to show­case his Par­adise im­print in the up­com­ing Brook­lyn Fash­ion Week.

That event be­gins on Fri­day and will run from Oc­to­ber 14 to Oc­to­ber 21.

“The Brook­lyn Fash­ion Week was an op­por­tu­ni­ty I got when I went on a trade mis­sion with Fash­ionTT ear­li­er this year in June,” he said.

“They loved my stuff and they want­ed me to be a part of the show. Sent in my stuff again and I got con­firmed. I am very, very grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty be­cause this is the first in­ter­na­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ty I’m get­ting. And when this hap­pens, I think this will be a call­ing card for all the oth­er fu­ture prospects I have. I want to go to Japan, Paris and New York Fash­ion Week (which last took place) in Sep­tem­ber. So I think this is an amaz­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty but al­so I don’t want to say a step­ping stone be­cause it is the first of many steps.”

While the 1ndi­vid­ual Aes­thet­ic has grown in rep­u­ta­tion in the T&T mar­ket and the Caribbean di­as­po­ra, Si­mon recog­nised that he would have to al­ter his for­mat to ap­peal to a wider de­mo­graph­ics.

Hence the Par­adise line came in­to ex­is­tence.

“I had to dif­fuse my brand, be­cause it wouldn’t be con­nect­ing with the Amer­i­can or in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ence if I was show­ing Trinidad-based stuff. We have a di­as­po­ra up there but it’s very niche in com­par­i­son to the larg­er prod­ucts.

“So I have a sub­sec­tion of my brand called Par­adise. What Par­adise means is very eas­i­ly man­age­able for that that kind of mar­ket. So that’s warm colours, tie-dye to kind of mim­ic the ocean for ex­am­ple, and waves and lots of flow­ers. So that is what’s go­ing to be shown there,” said Si­mon.

He ex­plained that while it would ap­peal to in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ences, it would still work to sell as­pects of the Caribbean.

“There’s no way I could have had the stuff that I have done here, up there that is not hy­per­fo­cused to the di­as­po­ra. It can on­ly be re­al­is­ti­cal­ly man­aged, whether in Car­ni­val set­tings or some­thing Caribbean cul­ture-based ver­sus the stuff I know, which is more of an in­ter­na­tion­al spin. Par­adise is more open for warm set­tings like blue beach, nice sand and that post­card vibe. That’s what I want to get my spin on that. So that’s where the in­ter­na­tion­al sec­tion of the brand comes in. It is for peo­ple that can be at­tached to it even though they are not from the Caribbean. It can be Amer­i­cans who just want to go to Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos or to Trinidad.”

But this could not be achieved by his more fa­mil­iar de­signs due to the dis­con­nect from the for­eign au­di­ence.

“That’s what I had to do. There’s no way I was gonna sell T&T’s watch­words to some­body in Utah. Some­one who would have to ask what bake and shark is, or what lim­bo is. It won’t ap­peal to them,” said Si­mon.

This de­vel­op­ment is an­oth­er land­mark for the brand which has seen steady in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­est since set­ting up a web­site in 2019, with the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic prompt­ing the lo­cal de­sign­er to im­prove on his e-com­merce op­tions amid grow­ing de­mand. How­ev­er, that in­ter­est had large­ly re­mained with­in the di­as­po­ra.

Af­ter the Brook­lyn Fash­ion event, Si­mon is head­ing to Toron­to where he has planned to shop the brand fur­ther.

How­ev­er, while he has in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pan­sion in his sights, Si­mon has not left his lo­cal au­di­ence be­hind.

He re­cent­ly launched a new T-Shirt which serves as an homage to one of the coun­try’s most fa­mous meals: dou­bles.

The yel­low-coloured tee which reads “Livin’ Sin­gle, Eatin’ Dou­bles” print­ed in red is meant to rep­re­sent the bar­ra, chan­na and pep­per of the pop­u­lar street food, Si­mon ex­plained

“Truth­ful­ly It’s just a play on words. It’s a pun and I love puns. I think that those things re­al­ly res­onate with peo­ple and make them laugh and hu­mour al­ways brings peo­ple to the prod­uct. So it starts off with that.

“And then ob­vi­ous­ly dou­bles is a na­tion­al del­i­ca­cy in Trinidad and To­ba­go, so they kind of put the two to­geth­er in a mar­riage,” said Si­mon, who added that even the pack­ag­ing of the shirt is meant to repli­cate the ex­pe­ri­ence of un­wrap­ping a dou­bles be­fore con­sump­tion.

“My brand is all about ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dif­fer­ent av­enues to love and ap­pre­ci­ate the brand, so the T-shirt may be amaz­ing for you, but the ex­pe­ri­ence of it be­ing wrapped up like a dou­bles...it’s the bag it­self, the East­er eggs on the bag. I just want every­body to re­alise it’s more than a prod­uct. It’s a lifestyle,” said Si­mon,” The colour scheme was kind of pur­pose­ly done like that. They’ll start with this colour scheme now but hope­ful­ly, when things grow suc­cess­ful, they might be more dif­fer­ent colours for it.”

Si­mon said while the shirt has on­ly re­cent­ly been re­leased, he had the idea to cre­ate a dou­bles-themed shirt for a few years and has ideas that he may de­vel­op in the fu­ture.

He al­so told the Busi­ness Guardian that he will be shop­ping his brand ag­gres­sive­ly dur­ing the up­com­ing Christ­mas and Car­ni­val sea­sons. 

“Car­ni­val and Christ­mas are com­ing up so I’m get­ting ready for that. I’m al­ways known to have dif­fer­ent pop-ups. So I’m more struc­tur­ing the pop-up scene when it comes to es­pe­cial­ly Car­ni­val. So ex­pect to see me in a lot of places, lots of dis­tri­b­u­tions. I al­ways try to en­gage the cus­tomer in pieces that they nor­mal­ly ex­pect I wouldn’t be.

“You wouldn’t nor­mal­ly see the brand at an event. So I nor­mal­ly try to en­gage the fan at an event rather than just go in­to a store. So ex­pect me there be­cause I’m kind of what is go­ing to be a very big sea­son,” said Si­mon.