Sean Nero

With the Car­ni­val 2017 mas band launch cy­cle al­most com­plete, fun-lovers had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to add an­oth­er lev­el of ex­cite­ment in the build up to the na­tion­al fes­ti­val, through the un­veil­ing of a col­lec­tion of Mon­day wear de­sign con­cepts.

In Chan­cel­lor was the ti­tle giv­en to the event, held at the Knag­gs Hill res­i­dence of for­mer West In­dies bat­ting star Bri­an Charles Lara on Oc­to­ber 22, where his girl­friend, Miss Scot­land Jamey Bow­ers, joined Shawn Dhan­raj, Ryan Chan, Marie-Co­lette for 212 Lo­ca­tion and Do­minic Hutch, as part of a ten-mem­ber de­sign­er cast that show­cased more than forty pieces col­lec­tive­ly.

Lau­ra Narayans­ingh, LSR De­signs, Trinidad Car­ni­val Dairy, Sum­mer­jade Swimwear and Humzee com­plet­ed the list of cre­ators at the evening's sig­na­ture event.

Ini­ti­ate Nov­el­ty, led by Kris­ten Ca­ma­cho and Ir­win Hack­shaw, col­lab­o­rat­ed with Lara on the pre­sen­ta­tion.

With the tra­di­tion of hav­ing mas­quer­aders adorned in full Car­ni­val cos­tume on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day now taboo, came the trend where street partiers dressed in parts of their cos­tume on day one of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion's Pa­rade of the Bands with self-styled em­bell­ish­ments. The full kit was on­ly re­vealed on day two.

As fate would have it, rev­ellers in­tro­duced their own-choice, which gave rise to the spe­cial­ty Mon­day wear con­cept.

Ca­ma­cho said with the back­ing of Lara, the event was re­alised. It start­ed be­cause they be­lieved there were too many re­peat events and that the mar­ket need­ed some­thing new.

Af­ter launch­ing the Ini­ti­ate Nov­el­ty brand back in Ju­ly at RuS­treet, St Clair, the out­fit fol­lowed up with an event ti­tled Gen­der Wars (Sports day), in Au­gust, held at St Mary's Grounds. The suc­cess of that event fu­elled the team's am­bi­tions and in came the Car­ni­val boost­er.

"The Mon­day wear event was some­thing we al­so came up with as be­ing new and dif­fer­ent. Mon­day wear for Car­ni­val is a fair­ly new con­cept in T&T, but it is def­i­nite­ly trend­ing and we see it de­vel­op­ing fur­ther in the next cou­ple years. We thought it would be a great idea to put on an event where we gave lo­cal de­sign­ers a plat­form to show­case their de­signs to an au­di­ence who would be in­ter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing these de­signs for Car­ni­val 2017," she said.

Ca­ma­cho added, "Bri­an Lara had the fan­tas­tic idea to al­so add the Hait­ian Do­na­tion as­pect to the event, which gave us and our pa­trons a chance to give back. We part­nered with Lara and Jamey Bow­ers and the event was def­i­nite­ly a suc­cess as the feed­back from de­sign­ers and pa­trons has been over­whelm­ing. We are hap­py to have had our first suc­cess­ful Mon­day wear fash­ion show and look for­ward to mak­ing it an an­nu­al event."