Joel Julien

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

Pho­tographs of mod­els in bathing suits walk­ing down the aisle of the Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral went vi­ral on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day as peo­ple ques­tioned the ap­pro­pri­ate­ness of the sit­u­a­tion. The pho­tographs were tak­en dur­ing a fash­ion show which took place at the main church of the An­gli­can dio­cese in T&T on Sat­ur­day night as part of Style Week, Port-of-Spain.

Flags ad­ver­tis­ing the event’s main spon­sor, the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB), were al­so dis­played on the church’s fence.

De­spite the on­line back­lash, how­ev­er, an­oth­er Style Week run­way show was held at the Cathe­dral last night which in­clud­ed on­line swimwear bou­tique, Gen­e­sis Swim.

El­lis Brig­gs, chair­man of Zetick Caribbean Lim­it­ed, the or­gan­is­er of Style Week, told Guardian Me­dia those hav­ing an is­sue with the fash­ion show at the church were just be­ing “hy­per­sen­si­tive”.

“There is a lot of talk about a pho­to of a mod­el in a bathing suit. I didn’t re­alise that the hu­man body was some­thing to be ashamed of. I didn’t re­alise that we as hu­man be­ings were born with clothes. I think peo­ple are just hy­per­sen­si­tive,” Brig­gs said.

“This is the era we live in. We live in this era where you put some­thing on the in­ter­net and it goes vi­ral and it be­comes a big con­tro­ver­sy and that’s that. No­body re­al­ly cares about the fash­ion de­sign­ers who are strug­gling or the mod­els who are get­ting an av­enue to show­case their tal­ents. No­body cares about that what they care about is just this lit­tle sen­sa­tion for the mo­ment. In a cou­ple of weeks they will for­get about that,” he said.

Zetick Caribbean Lim­it­ed’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Shun­nel Roopc­hand com­mend­ed the An­gli­can church for be­ing “for­ward-think­ing and very progress by al­low­ing the show to take place there.

“Style Week is about high­light­ing tal­ents that are giv­en to us by God, cre­ative tal­ents and that was the po­si­tion of the church as well,” Roopc­hand said.

Roopc­hand said a por­tion of the pro­ceeds from the show will go the church to aid in their restora­tion works.

“Our agree­ment with the church is dual pur­posed. While they are very, very hap­py to ac­com­mo­date us, we would al­so be as­sist­ing in their restora­tion,” she said.

Last Au­gust, the Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral sus­tained struc­tur­al dam­age as a re­sult of a mas­sive earth­quake that hit Port-of-Spain. Roopc­hand said funds re­quired for this restora­tion has been val­ued at $5 mil­lion.

“So hope­ful­ly we can get peo­ple per­haps in­ter­est­ed—maybe some of those same peo­ple on so­cial me­dia—to come in and chip in some­thing to help the restora­tion ef­forts of the church,” Brig­gs said.

Brig­gs said Style Week did not start a trend by hold­ing a fash­ion show in a church.

“This is noth­ing new. We didn’t set any trend. This has gone on in­ter­na­tion­al­ly al­ready,” he said.

“They (naysay­ers) like a cause. They are home right now sit­ting down try­ing to fig­ure out what the next cause is, where can I make a bac­cha­nal,” he said.

“Ask one of them to come out and sup­port fash­ion or come out and sup­port mod­els, or sup­port lo­cal de­sign­ers, you will not hear any­thing. They will not retweet, they will not re­post some­thing a de­sign­er puts up but this is what catch­es their at­ten­tion and the on­ly thing they see is a mod­el in a bathing suit in a church. They are not see­ing the cre­ativ­i­ty of the peo­ple, they are not see­ing all the oth­er hard work that goes on be­hind the scene to raise the bar in fash­ion in Trinidad,” Brig­gs said.

“I wish the pho­to goes vi­ral to the point where the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty sees it and starts to recog­nise that fash­ion is hap­pen­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go in a se­ri­ous way,” he said.

Brig­gs said footage of the event will soon be on the Ap­ple stream­ing ser­vice and avail­able to 20 ter­ri­to­ries, in­clud­ing five cities in the Unit­ed States.

“We are glad we are cre­at­ing some waves, that our mes­sage is be­ing trans­ferred be­cause our fash­ion in­dus­try has so much to of­fer,” he said.

Brig­gs said T&T born mod­el Nao­mi Chin Wing, who is cur­rent­ly mak­ing waves in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, grad­u­at­ed from Style Week.

“We are not too caught up with all of that. We like the pub­lic­i­ty but we are not too con­cerned about a pic­ture of a mod­el in a bathing suit be­com­ing an is­sue,” Brig­gs said.

He said the church is one of the most beau­ti­ful places he has ever seen.

“The venue is one of the most beau­ti­ful lo­ca­tions that I have seen in this coun­try. That is a 200-year-old church with ar­chi­tec­ture that you can’t find any­where else and for me, as a film­mak­er, it’s aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing to what we are do­ing and it is a nice con­trast to some of the fash­ion that we have on dis­play,” he said.

In 2018, Car­ni­val band K2K Al­liance & Part­ners’ launched its pre­sen­ta­tion Through the Stained Glass Win­dows at the All Saints An­gli­can Church in Port-of-Spain.