Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

In two short weeks, the UTT will present the the­sis works of its first batch of de­gree grad­uands of the Caribbean Acad­e­my for Fash­ion and De­sign. I'm par­tic­u­lar­ly ex­cit­ed about this event be­cause I've been writ­ing on the CAFD since be­fore it be­gan, and have pre­vi­ous­ly ar­gued in these pages that we need to fos­ter our own fash­ion in­dus­try. This grad­u­at­ing class rep­re­sents an ex­cit­ing de­vel­op­ment for us, and not just for the fash­ion­istas of T&T.

The four-year de­gree in fash­ion and de­sign taught fash­ion ba­sics like colour and de­sign, draw­ing, tex­tiles, and gar­ment con­struc­tion, as well as com­put­er-as­sist­ed de­sign, mar­ket­ing, law, and prod­uct de­vel­op­ment. It is the on­ly school of its kind in the re­gion and sought to be on par with in­ter­na­tion­al in­sti­tutes like FIT and Par­sons in New York. "Who wants to wear cheap Chi­nese clothes which soon fall apart, when we could all be wear­ing pret­ty, well-de­signed clothes made in T&T?" This ques­tion was asked by fash­ion au­thor­i­ty Rose­mary Stone at an NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest dis­cus­sion in April, as re­port­ed by the T&T Guardian. Stone, au­thor of A Spir­it­ed But­ter­fly: A His­to­ry of Fash­ion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, said, "We need to rein­vent the fash­ion wheel." She not­ed that in the past T&T "had a vi­brant in­dus­try" and added, "The shirt-man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies such as New York­er, Kay and Elite pro­duced around 600 dozen shirts per day at peak pe­ri­ods, main­ly for the ex­port mar­ket. We need to re­build that mar­ket, es­pe­cial­ly in women's cloth­ing, to as­sist in the coun­try's di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme. We need to put all the tal­ent­ed seam­stress­es, tai­lors, de­sign­ers, cut­ters and sales peo­ple to work. It could be re­built in­to a huge in­dus­try."

As I've ar­gued be­fore, fash­ion isn't mere­ly the province of the elite; it has an im­pact on every­one, as we all have to wear clothes. The ab­sence of a well-de­vel­oped fash­ion in­dus­try has im­pli­ca­tions not on­ly for the labour mar­ket and Trea­sury, but on the way we see our­selves. I'm no iso­la­tion­ist but it seems to me that char­i­ty be­gins at home; we ought to de­vel­op our own no­tions of what is cool rather than mere­ly buy in­to oth­er peo­ple's ideas of it.

This CAFD grad­u­at­ing class of near­ly 40 stu­dents can make a dif­fer­ence to the lo­cal fash­ion in­dus­try, but they can't do it alone. They will need the in­sti­tu­tion­al sup­port of gov­ern­ment–in the form of tax breaks and oth­er in­cen­tives–and banks that would be will­ing to lend them funds to get their fash­ion busi­ness­es off the ground.

They will al­so need a cus­tomer base, and that will mean in­flu­enc­ing John and Jane Pub­lic to forego cheap im­port­ed clothes for lo­cal­ly pro­duced gar­ments which, let's face it, might cost more. While the out­right pro­tec­tion­ism of a Neg­a­tive List is un­like­ly to re­turn, there must be some means of nur­tur­ing the in­dus­try so that it will have a chance to rise again. My friend and for­mer col­league James Hack­ett is in this group of CAFD grad­uands. He said in re­sponse to a ques­tion I asked him via e-mail yes­ter­day, "A lot of peo­ple seem to have prob­lems think­ing of what to do, but the pro­gramme has re­al­ly armed us with a lot of skills, and prac­ti­cal ones at that: we can do jew­el­ry, hand­bags, and al­so yes, we can make clothes. "I think some peo­ple can do well pro­vid­ing some fresh new cloth­ing in­sights and may do re­al­ly well to set up bou­tiques. I am more go­ing to ap­ply fash­ion to a lot of prac­ti­cal and cre­ative op­tions right here, like Car­ni­val, for in­stance." James, a gift­ed graph­ic artist, has been in Car­ni­val de­sign be­fore and it would be thrilling to see what he comes up with for Car­ni­val with the CAFD tools. Ul­ti­mate­ly, one can­not teach tal­ent, so each in­di­vid­ual grad­uand will have to prove his or her own strength as a fash­ion pro­fes­sion­al. Let us give them our sup­port.

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UTT will host a talk on "Mo­bil­i­sa­tion to­wards a Sus­tain­able Fash­ion In­dus­try" at The­atre 2, NA­PA, Keate Street, Port-of-Spain, on June 21 at 7 pm. Seats are lim­it­ed; con­tact thea­cad­e­my@utt.edu.tt for an in­vi­ta­tion.

The UTT CAFD Se­nior The­sis Fash­ion Show & De­sign­er Crit­ic Award Show takes place on June 23 at 7 pm at NA­PA. Tick­ets cost $100 and $150 and are avail­able at the UTT John S Don­ald­son Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute Cam­pus, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain. For more in­fo, phone: 642-8888 ext 26434 or check the UTT: Caribbean Acad­e­my of Fash­ion and De­sign page on Face­book.