Lau­ra Dowrich-Phillips

De­spite the ac­co­lades that she has re­ceived from heavy­weights in the Amer­i­can en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try, Vashtie Ko­la is very proud of the recog­ni­tion she re­ceives here in T&T. A first-gen­er­a­tion Amer­i­can to Trinida­di­an par­ents, Ko­la is con­sid­ered a cre­ative tour de force in New York's en­ter­tain­ment cir­cles, and while she con­sid­ers her suc­cess a tri­umph, it's the way she's per­ceived lo­cal­ly that mat­ters the most. "Be­ing in a big city like New York and hold­ing your own is a big tri­umph for me. My par­ents have a hard time un­der­stand­ing what I do but they're proud and to be able to go to my fam­i­ly's coun­try of ori­gin and be con­sid­ered some­one of worth, I feel re­al­ly proud," she said.

Ko­la was in Trinidad re­cent­ly to show her new cloth­ing line, Vi­o­lette, at An­til­ia's Be event at the Carl­ton Sa­van­nah. While here, she vis­it­ed rel­a­tives in Ch­agua­nas, and sev­er­al ar­eas across the coun­try. A video of her trip is post­ed on her web site www.vashtie.com. This was on­ly her fourth vis­it to Trinidad and it was cer­tain­ly a rev­e­la­tion for Ko­la, who was ex­posed to a side of this coun­try she didn't know ex­ist­ed. "It's fun­ny, the past three times I've been there I stayed with fam­i­ly, they are very work­ing class, live very far away from Port of Spain. Go­ing there this time was amaz­ing, I had no idea what ex­ist­ed out­side of what I knew. I was ac­cus­tomed to mos­qui­to nets and bathing in buck­ets. This time it was a more Amer­i­can­ised, mod­ern Trinidad."

Asked which Trinidad she pre­ferred, Ko­la said she felt torn. "All the flaws and very unique things about a sub­ject is what makes it. That ex­pe­ri­ence was great but the whole time I want­ed to leave the ho­tel and go eat some re­al food and go where peo­ple are mak­ing their own fash­ion," she said. Ko­la shared her ex­pe­ri­ence with Theophilus Lon­don, a New York�based singer who was born in Trinidad. Lon­don was one of the guest per­form­ers at Be. "Theophilus said it wasn't un­til a cou­ple years ago he felt proud to be a Tri­ni. Grow­ing up with peo­ple who aren't like you, it's hard to be proud of your her­itage. I spent my younger, teenage years not sure of what to call my­self. When I met Theo, I was like wow, you to­tal­ly get it; you un­der­stand me and the food I like. Go­ing to Trinidad with him, we were able to go hard with that," she said.

Ko­la has worked cre­ative­ly with Lon­don, di­rect­ing his most re­cent video for the song I Want You, the tit­u­lar track off his Mix­tape. She said they are cur­rent­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing on a slew of projects. List­ed in 2009 as one of Vibe Mag­a­zine's 31 Styl­ish Peo­ple un­der 31, Ko­la is an artist, writer, video di­rec­tor, de­sign­er, par­ty pro­mot­er and en­tre­pre­neur who has been hailed for her cre­ativ­i­ty. A di­rect­ing and cin­e­matog­ra­phy grad­u­ate of The School of Vi­su­al Arts in New York, Ko­la worked as a di­rec­tor for Box Fresh Pic­tures in 1999 mak­ing videos for artists such as Beans, J-Sta­tus and Tony Hus­sle. She al­so wrote video treat­ments for fa­mous video di­rec­tors such as Lenny Bass, Dr. Teeth and An­tho­ny Man­dler. Ac­cord­ing to Wikipedia, she wrote the treat­ment for Com­mon's video Tes­ti­fy which starred Tara­ji P. Hen­son and Wood Har­ris and dur­ing the same time, styled and mod­eled for the cloth­ing line, Bil­lion­aire Boys Club.

In 2006, at the age of 25, L.A. Reid, pres­i­dent of Is­land Def Jam, asked her to re­vamp "Is­land Def Jam" the com­pa­ny as Di­rec­tor of Cre­ative Ser­vices. He re­port­ed­ly said she would be "the one to keep the build­ing cool, some­one in tune with down­town cool and pop main­stream." In 2007, Ko­la left Def Jam to work on her own and pur­sue some cre­ative projects she had longed to do. One of them was the de­vel­op­ment of a sig­na­ture cloth­ing line. "A lot of mak­ing stuff came out of ne­ces­si­ty. We were re­al­ly poor, my par­ents were work­ing two jobs and rais­ing three chil­dren. I couldn't af­ford the lat­est trends, for me it was go­ing to thrift stores and mak­ing them fit with the lat­est trends. Two years ago I de­cid­ed to just do my line," said Ko­la, who learnt to silk-screen T-shirts in col­lege. Vi­o­lette is a trendy, ca­su­al line that Ko­la has de­scribed as "if Louis Vuit­ton had a daugh­ter liv­ing in the Low­er East Side she'd be rock­ing a cool t-shirt, kicks, and a great hand­bag."

The line mir­rors Ko­la's own sense of style, which leans to­wards a more com­fort­able, tomboy style. "Vi­o­lette is for any­body. If you have an in­ter­est in things ca­su­al and fash­ion for­ward, it's for you. "I can wear it every day. For some­one else it can be worn at cer­tain times," she said, ex­press­ing a de­sire to make Vi­o­lette avail­able lo­cal­ly one day. Ko­la, who dat­ed pro­duc­er and rap­per Pharell Williams for five years is af­fec­tion­ate­ly known as Down­town's Sweet­heart. She got the ti­tle be­cause of her abil­i­ty to bridge the gap be­tween un­der­ground cool and in­dus­try main­stream and her friend­ly, down-to-earth de­meanour. "I think my up­bring­ing," she said, ex­plain­ing how she's been able to keep so ground­ed. "I've been at the low­est. Not to say I had a hor­ri­ble life but I know what's it like to be on wel­fare and that stayed with me. "My friends are the same way, they don't be­lieve the hype. It's not the job that makes you, and be­ing around peo­ple with mon­ey and pow­er, you get to re­alise what's re­al in the world. If you don't have a good heart and good in­ten­tions, what are you re­al­ly?"