Aba A. Luke

She's brought back an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for vin­tage and, cou­pling this with con­tem­po­rary chic, lo­cal fash­ion de­sign­er Meil­ing left noth­ing to the imag­i­na­tion at Tues­day night's un­veil­ing of her 2010 cloth­ing col­lec­tion.

At the Hilton Trinidad ball­room, friends, well-wish­ers, in­dus­try trend-set­ters–among them 3Canal, Al­li­son Hen­nessy, Pene­lope Spencer, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Wy­att Gallery, whose name has been the top­ic of much con­ver­sa­tion late­ly, and even Scorch Mag­a­zine's So­phie Wight, who took to the run­way as part of Meil­ing's team of stun­ning cat­walk strut­ters–came and en­joyed. The event, which be­gan at 7 pm, marked the start of the Spring sea­son and Meil­ing con­tin­ued her theme, The Se­cret Life Of Plants, which she in­tro­duced ear­li­er this year at Fash­ion Week T&T, Ja­maica and Toron­to. The de­signes mim­ic­ked the seren­i­ty of coun­try life, with colours epit­o­mis­ing the earth­i­ness of an un­touched Caribbean and ma­te­ri­als that re­flect­ed a leaf's mo­tion in a sooth­ing trop­i­cal breeze.

Stray­ing from the norm, the de­sign­er and her team–which in­clud­ed An­tho­ny Reid, who show­cased his men's col­lec­tion–chose to in­ter­twine male and fe­male col­lec­tions. Clev­er­ly though, sec­tions were sep­a­rat­ed by tones, hues, pat­terns and style lev­el. From ca­su­al to evening wear, the fash­ion maven pulled out all the stops, draw­ing every­one's at­ten­tion to the cat­walk. With ac­ces­sories seem­ing­ly a thing of the past go­ing in­to 2010 (though the mod­els wore spec­ta­cles cour­tesy Op­tique in The Falls at West Mall), there was a great em­pha­sis on silk, with ma­te­ri­als flow­ing, al­low­ing for easy move­ment and that feel­ing of gai­ety and re­lax­ation. Poofines," for want of a bet­ter ad­jec­tive, was present through­out: there was poofy hair, poofy sleeves and es­pe­cial­ly poofy bodices, a clear fash­ion state­ment, go­ing in­to the new year.

The strongest mo­tif, how­ev­er, was Meil­ing's use of colour as a state­ment. Soft tones of pinks, greens, browns and greys came to the fore with Reid's col­lec­tion of men's jack­ets, trousers and vests, in­te­grat­ing well among Meil­ing's fe­male-ori­ent­ed line of jack­ets and skirts, dress­es, shorts, ruf­fled tops, em­broi­dered bodices and see-through teas­er pieces. Whether it is fact or sus­pi­cion that women crave fash­ion more than their male coun­ter­parts, Meil­ing's col­lec­tion tick­led a woman's cloth­ing crav­ing while Reid of­fered pieces that would ful­fill a man's silent yearn­ing. The af­ter-par­ty was meant for en­joy­ing hors d'oeu­vres and wine while min­gling with the so­cialites who re­mained. Fol­low­ing the grand re­veal, there will sure­ly be a mas­sive in­flux of shop­pers at Meil­ing's Kapok re­tail out­let. Be­ing the per­fec­tion­ist she is though, there's no doubt she's ready.