Sean Nero

Top lo­cal de­sign­er Clau­dia Pe­gus has many prime mo­ments in her life to cel­e­brate. Back in Au­gust she was the re­cip­i­ent of a Cha­co­nia Medal Gold for her con­tri­bu­tion to the lo­cal fash­ion in­dus­try. Mere weeks lat­er the de­sign­er found an ide­al space for the es­tab­lish­ment of the Clau­dia Pe­gus Ate­lier, lo­cat­ed on O'Con­nor Street, Wood­brook.

On De­cem­ber 5, she un­veiled her Christ­mas col­lec­tion, which co­in­cid­ed with the for­mal launch of her Ate­lier at a glitzy event ti­tled PM1 at her Wood­brook fash­ion house to VIP clients. Of course, those were just some of her fine ac­com­plish­ments. But it was news Pe­gus re­ceived on the eve of un­veil­ing PM1 from Unit­ed States to Am­bas­sador to T&T Beat­rice Wilkin­son Wel­ters that sobered her.

"I got an e-mail from the US Am­bas­sador last night. She wore one of my dress­es to an event. She sat next to the Sec­re­tary of State (Hillary Clin­ton)...And the amount of com­pli­ments she got... "That is where my head is at...tak­ing a re­gion­al brand and show­ing in­ter­na­tion­al align­ment; tak­ing it to a whole new lev­el," she said.

"This evening was a cel­e­bra­tion of 2010. 2010 has been a great year for me. I'm cel­e­brat­ing the prime mo­ments in my life and hence the rea­son I called the event PM1. Pe­gus did not say what she would be ho­n­oured for in 2011, nor by whom. She said her fo­cus is about po­si­tion­ing her lo­cal brand with those in­ter­na­tion­al re­pute.

Pe­gus ex­plained that's the rea­son every year at Christ­mas time, she brought in in­ter­na­tion­al la­bels to present at her shows to in­di­cate where T&T was, at any point in time. New York-based de­sign­ers: Ko­r­to Mo­molu of Project Run­way and Mel Si­mon of Si­mon Dun­can; Tas Fe­male Cloth­ing Line & Orente Ay'aba, Nige­ria; Rhi­an Kem­per­doo, Mil­ner, Lon­don showed their lines at PM1.

The event was a show­case for lo­cal tal­ent, too, as wit­nessed in the lin­gerie col­lec­tion from Ms Brafit, while Adri­ana Ca­ma­cho was re­spon­si­ble for jew­el­ery.?The col­lec­tions were styled by in­ter­na­tion­al fash­ion styl­ist, Carl­ton Jones. Jones had styled US First Michelle Oba­ma. Make-up was done by Kirk Cam­bridge-Delpeche, who is al­so in­ter­na­tion­al­ly renowned.

Pe­gus said: "I've worked with Carl­ton for the last ten years. They have al­ways in­vit­ed me to show in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. I thought it on­ly right that I bring them here to see what we have here."he un­der­scored T&T's un­tapped po­ten­tial in the re­gion when it came to fash­ion.

In her view, this coun­try could be num­ber one in the in­dus­try, but had to re­alise that peo­ple in the in­dus­try had to rise to the chal­lenge and "show our hand." "This is a night where I showed my hand. I think that fash­ion has a lot of po­ten­tial. My thing is about align­ing my­self with the se­ri­ous play­ers. There are a lot of play­ers, but not all of them are com­pe­tent or se­ri­ous.

"The play­ers that I align my brand with are all se­ri­ous. I am all about busi­ness, de­vel­op­ment, po­si­tion­ing and strate­gic al­liances. "So for me, I am re­al­ly not in­ter­est­ed in align­ing my brand with any stake­hold­ers who can­not take me any­where," Pe­gus said.

She added, "I don't think a Na­tion­al Award is an ac­cla­ma­tion of my work or what I have con­tributed. It's an en­dorse­ment that's wor­thy. It can do a lot for me. But I'm all about in­dus­try de­vel­op­ment. I am not about lights, ac­tion, cam­era. "I am not about play­ing. I'm a se­ri­ous busi­ness woman. I'm about tak­ing a lo­cal brand to an in­ter­na­tion­al plat­form. That is my one fo­cus. I now about the cat­tle farm sit­u­a­tion lo­cal­ly."