What if you could play mas and be so­cial­ly re­spon­si­ble? Imag­ine play­ing mas and be­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly at the same time.It may sound far-fetched or not thought about at all by some, but it is com­ing very soon.

This is the aim of Brown Cot­ton Caribbean with their Free­dom Vibe Tribe line.

Brown Cot­ton Caribbean is a sus­tain­abil­i­ty-fo­cused cre­ative agency which is cur­rent­ly based in the Spice Isle Grena­da. It is man­aged by two Trinida­di­an women Risanne Mar­tin, its founder and Leah de Gannes.

The brand is mak­ing waves as it re­cent­ly re­leased a sus­tain­able Car­ni­val Cos­tume con­cept which will be worn by sev­er­al mas­quer­aders hit­ting the road in Grena­da’s Spice­Mas in the next cou­ple weeks.
This con­cept, Mar­tin and Brown Cot­ton hope, will shape the Car­ni­vals of the Fu­ture.

It had been wide­ly ex­pect­ed that af­ter two years with­out a tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val, the up­com­ing fes­ti­vals across the Caribbean would breathe fresh life in­to the mar­ket, and Mar­tin’s de­ci­sion to cre­ate a sus­tain­able Car­ni­val Cos­tume has proven that ex­pec­ta­tion to be true.

Mar­tin has been a de­sign­er for just about a decade. She built her rep­u­ta­tion by de­sign­ing out­fits for sev­er­al ma­jor artistes in the so­ca fra­ter­ni­ty such as Ker­win Du Bois, Nailah Black­man, Na­dia Bat­son and De­stra.

Over the years these artistes have tak­en to the stage or shot mu­sic videos adorned in de­signs by Brown Cot­ton.

 In 2020, she was sought by So­ca King Machel Mon­tano to de­sign for him and his team for his per­for­mances over the course of the sea­son.

How­ev­er while the lead­ing en­ter­tain­ers with­in the Car­ni­val in­dus­try were adorned with her de­signs, Mar­tin did not have her eyes set on  Car­ni­val cos­tume de­sign. At least not un­til she saw The Lost Tribe emerge with their brand which shift­ed away sig­nif­i­cant­ly from the typ­i­cal biki­ni and beads dis­play.

She start­ed de­sign­ing for Lost Tribe in 2017, and over time the em­bryo for the sus­tain­able cos­tume be­gan to de­vel­op.

Some may think that Car­ni­val cos­tumes may not be the most en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly detri­men­tal as­pect of the Car­ni­val in­dus­try, but the cos­tumes, ei­ther through pro­duc­tion or use, even­tu­al­ly be­come dis­card­ed and as a re­sult, con­tribute to non-biodegrad­able waste.

Mar­tin said she hoped to buck that trend through her work.

She told the Busi­ness Guardian that an ex­pe­ri­ence in Car­ni­val 2020 in par­tic­u­lar in­spired her to push the idea.

“In 2020, my Trinidad Car­ni­val de­sign in­clud­ed a lot of plas­tic parts. While on the road I saw one in a drain and I felt sick lit­er­al­ly. This in­spired us to join the sus­tain­able move­ment and to find cre­ative ways to do bet­ter for our plan­et and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions,” she said.

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the down time cre­at­ed with­in the Car­ni­val sec­tor al­lowed for a pe­ri­od of self re­flec­tion for Mar­tin, who moved to Grena­da.

“The feel­ing was re­al­ly self prob­ing. How can this art leave a lega­cy? How can I leave this world, this earth bet­ter than I found it? My part­ner Leah and I asked our­selves these ques­tions for years be­fore the pan­dem­ic but it nev­er man­i­fest­ed it­self un­til the pan­dem­ic when all the work had stopped. We found the courage to be and cre­ate what we be­lieved in, dur­ing the lock­down,” she told the Busi­ness Guardian.

Mar­tin ex­plained af­ter de­sign­ing those cos­tumes in pre-COVID era, she em­barked up­on a per­son­al sus­tain­able jour­ney and re-brand­ed the Brown Cot­ton Caribbean brand to re­flect these core val­ues.

The COVID-19 pause of the Car­ni­val sec­tor turned out to be a bless­ing as the new fo­cus was for­mu­lat­ed and so­lid­i­fied.

“We give thanks for the break that COVID al­lowed us. That time al­lowed us to fo­cus on a big­ger pur­pose than mak­ing mon­ey. We still love mak­ing mon­ey,” she paused to laugh, “but we al­so en­joy shar­ing cre­ative and sus­tain­able ways to con­sume fash­ion and Car­ni­val cul­ture.”

The brand has be­come known for up­cy­cling and re­pur­pos­ing fash­ion and has at­tempt to push oth­ers to fol­low suit through the cre­ation a YouTube page. There the brand con­stant­ly en­cour­ages oth­ers to lim­it their fast fash­ion con­sump­tion and dis­pos­al.

The brand is cer­tain that Car­ni­val con­sump­tion and dis­pos­al can be man­aged by each in­di­vid­ual by up­cy­cling and re­pur­pos­ing pieces.

Mar­tin said it is Brown Cot­ton Caribbean’s hope that Car­ni­val can be less harm­ful for our Caribbean en­vi­ron­ment and she has tak­en the first step by cre­at­ing these new cos­tumes, which con­tain sev­er­al reused el­e­ments.

“Hand­made ‘feath­ers’ us­ing re­cy­cled den­im and cot­ton fab­ric left over from past projects. I have been col­lect­ing used den­im and treat­ing it for some time in an­tic­i­pa­tion for this project. We al­so en­cour­age our cus­tomers to get cre­ative with the cos­tume pieces to use as home or of­fice dé­cor. Every year we plan to add even more sus­tain­able el­e­ments. We are cer­tain­ly not the first to con­sid­er this mod­el and we are ex­cit­ed to bring our unique twist an­nu­al­ly,” she ex­plained.

How­ev­er with such a unique ap­proach, there would be some who might ques­tion how the cos­tumes would hold up com­pared to their pret­ty mas rel­a­tives, but Mar­tin is con­fi­dent that she has found the right bal­ance of de­sign and eco-sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

“There have been a few chal­lenges cre­ative­ly in bridg­ing the gap be­tween beau­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty but I be­lieve we have over­come that and can now fo­cus on in­spir­ing oth­ers in the space to em­brace a more sus­tain­able ap­proach,” she said.

The re­sponse to her work so far has been well re­ceived. The cos­tumes are set to début in the up­com­ing Grena­da Car­ni­val, bet­ter known as Spice Mas and de­spite lim­it­ed mar­ket­ing, the Free­dom Vibe Tribe line is al­ready a hot sell­er.

Mar­tin said, “Our so­cial me­dia cam­paign has on­ly start­ed a few days ago and the re­sponse has been over­whelm­ing. There has been so much in­ter­est­ing di­a­logue in the is­land Car­ni­val space about beau­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. The cos­tumes are al­ready sold out and we are so ex­cit­ed to share this ex­pe­ri­ence at Grena­da Spice Mas 2022.”

She told the Busi­ness Guardian that there are al­ready plans to bring the de­signs back to T&T’s Car­ni­val in 2023.