Kevon Felmine

With less than two weeks to Car­ni­val Mon­day, band­lead­ers in south Trinidad say cos­tumes are go­ing like hot bread. Mas men from sev­er­al of San Fer­nan­do's tra­di­tion­al, J'Ou­vert and chil­dren's bands say most of their sec­tions have been 'sold out'. An­drew Kallicha­ran, com­mit­tee mem­ber of the Ivan Kallicha­ran out­fit, said their cos­tumes were mov­ing faster than they did last year.

Al­ready, he said, the band's pre­sen­ta­tion for 2012, We Go­ing Car­ni­val, has seen five of the eight avail­able sec­tions be­ing sold out with few­er than 100 cos­tumes left. Kalicha­ran said: "Sales of cos­tumes are go­ing much bet­ter than last year. Sec­tions such as Italy, Spain, Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ger­many and Eng­land are al­ready fin­ished. We have a lot of peo­ple who live along the East/West cor­ri­dor com­ing down in San Fer­nan­do to play with us. "Is not just San­do peo­ple play­ing and peo­ple are al­so com­ing from oth­er bands as well. Com­pared to last year, this Car­ni­val should be big­ger."

An­oth­er band, Owen C Hinds Foun­da­tion, re­port­ed that sales were mov­ing nice­ly de­spite the late start of their Car­ni­val 2012 cam­paign. Sweda­ka Matthews, a con­sul­tant to the band, said a mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy of­fered dis­counts to fam­i­lies and groups. He said the prices of cos­tumes were com­pet­i­tive be­cause they ranged from $1,200 to $1,400 be­fore 20 and 30 per­cent dis­counts were ap­plied. Matthews added that this year's pre­sen­ta­tion-Hats off to Owen Hinds-had at­tract­ed mas lovers as it gave them a mix­ture of tra­di­tion­al and mod­ern day mas.

Pop­u­lar J'Ou­vert band, Dev's Bar­ber­shop, said it had al­ready sold 60 per­cent of the cos­tumes on of­fer.New and ex­cit­ing J'Ou­vert band Choco­late Heav­en's band leader Jacqui Koon How said she had room for on­ly 50 more mas­quer­aders. Koon How said the band at­tract­ed fe­males for the most part. On the oth­er hand, she said, cos­tumes for her chil­dren's band were al­most sold out in prepa­ra­tion for the sev­er­al Kid­dies Car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tions around the coun­try.