Cherisse Moe

?A lit­tle cut here and a lit­tle snip there, that's how Ron­nie and Caro's Car­o­line McIn­tosh start­ed to re­design her cos­tumes as a teenag­er, play­ing mas in the now de­funct Car­ni­val bands Poi­son and Bar­barossa. Caro, as she's af­fec­tion­ate­ly called, want­ed to look dif­fer­ent from her fel­low mas­quer­aders, even though they were in the same band. Lit­tle did she sus­pect then, that was the be­gin­ning of a ful­fill­ing ca­reer in cos­tume de­sign­ing. "When my friends saw my cos­tume, every year, they would want me to de­sign their cos­tumes too," she says, with a laugh. With an eye for de­tail and a mind fo­cused on per­fect­ing her craft, the 36-year-old, who start­ed play­ing mas at the ten­der age of eight with Pe­ter Min­shall's Jun­gle Fever, has pos­i­tive­ly con­tributed to the lo­cal Car­ni­val in­dus­try and she's not about to take her foot off the gas.

ABOVE: ?Car­o­line McIn­tosh, right, with cousin Maryse De Gourville, for­mer Miss T&T.

Hat-trick

Fresh from cel­e­brat­ing a hat-trick in the Medi­um Band of the Year cat­e­go­ry, Car­o­line, along with hus­band and part­ner in mas, vet­er­an so­ca artiste Ron­nie McIn­tosh, wowed the judges on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day with their pre­sen­ta­tion ti­tled Trib­ute, in which they paid homage to leg­endary mas­men, in­clud­ing George Bai­ley, Stephen Lee He­ung, Wayne Berke­ley, Ed­mund and Lil Hart and Pe­ter Min­shall. The band, which won the pres­ti­gious ti­tles in 2008 and again in 2009, with their por­tray­als, De Gulf and Bakkanal, re­spec­tive­ly, al­so cap­tured this year's Male In­di­vid­ual of the Year ti­tle, with the beau­ti­ful cos­tume, D Head Hunter, por­trayed by Kei­th Tin­to. Car­o­line, who says she was "speech­less and over­whelmed" by the win, is hop­ing that the three-year-old band, which she says pro­vides its rev­ellers with qual­i­ty ser­vice and an ex­cel­lent time on the road, will con­tin­ue its win­ning streak next year and go for its forth con­sec­u­tive vic­to­ry.

LEFT: ?Male In­di­vid­ual of the Year 2010, Kei­th Tin­to, por­trays D Head Hunter - Trib­ute to George Bai­ley, from Ron­nie and Caro's Trib­ute, on the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah stage.

Sur­vivors

Al­ready gear­ing up for that win, the woman with a vi­sion for mas is forg­ing ahead with the prepa­ra­tions for her C2K11 pre­sen­ta­tion, which she says will be called Sur­vivors. She ex­plains: "On Ash Wednes­day, Ron­nie, my mom and my­self were sit­ting in the gallery, just rem­i­nisc­ing on Car­ni­val 2009 and 2010 and all the things that we sur­vived, such as the earth­quake in Haiti, and I came up with the theme Sur­vivor. "And we were all like, yeah, that's it!"

Biki­ni and beads

Not­ing that she im­ports some of her ma­te­ri­als from New York, as the "va­ri­ety is not as wide here," she de­fends what some have termed "biki­ni and beads mas," say­ing, it's all about what the peo­ple want. "We do try to do both kinds of cos­tumes. We tried to put in the long skirts with no feath­ers for one of our sec­tions but you know what hap­pened? The mas­quer­aders cut off all the fab­ric," she says, laugh­ing. "Nine­ty per cent of our mas­quer­aders go for the biki­ni and beads and feath­ers. That's what they call for, that's our mar­ket, so we cater to them." With no plans to en­ter the large band cat­e­go­ry in the fu­ture, as the band's mas­quer­aders are "con­tent" with its more in­ti­mate size, Ron­nie and Caro is in­deed prov­ing to be a force to be reck­oned with for Car­ni­val–and Ronald and Car­o­line McIn­tosh would have it no oth­er way.

Ed­i­tor's note: Car­line McIn­tosh is the first fe­male Car­ni­val de­sign­er/band leader to score a hat-trick in the Band of the Year com­pe­ti­tion.