De­siree McEachrane

Like many young artists, Crys­tal An­toine grav­i­tat­ed to­ward her pas­sions very ear­ly in life. "In sec­ondary school, art was my thing. It was al­ways art. Every­thing about art and be­ing cre­ative, I want­ed to do it," said An­toine.

And like many young artists, she re­ceived ad­vice from adults who knew bet­ter. "Peo­ple kept ask­ing me, 'What are you go­ing to do? Art can't pay the bills." An­toine has proved them wrong by be­com­ing a suc­cess­ful graph­ic de­sign­er at one of T&T's largest ad­ver­tis­ing agen­cies. And she's aim­ing to do so again by the end of her de­gree in fash­ion and de­sign at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT).She's on­ly in her first year, but An­toine's class has al­ready been gain­ing valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence in the fash­ion world, work­ing back­stage on some of the biggest shows this year like the Fifth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as Spous­es Fash­ion Show which took place back in April.

And An­toine and her class­mates worked back­stage again when The SHOW (Sim­ply Help­ing Our World): An Evening of Cul­ture, Cock­tails and Cou­ture took place yes­ter­day. The char­i­ty event fea­tured the work of de­sign­ers like Heather Jones and Mill­house, as well as jazz artistes like Vaugh­nette Big­ford. An­toine's de­sign sketch­es won her a con­tract to have her work fea­tured on the event posters, along with those of an­oth­er male stu­dent. "My in­spi­ra­tion can come from any­thing," said An­toine. "I would go to the movies, for ice cream, or to an art gallery and I no­tice every­thing, colours es­pe­cial­ly.

"Peo­ple in­spire me too. I just have to get a piece of pa­per in front of me and sketch!" she said.

UTT's fash­ion de­sign pro­gramme is push­ing and stretch­ing An­toine's artis­tic tal­ent in­to a gift that is world class. The stu­dents do a range of de­sign work, from learn­ing how to sew and drape fab­ric them­selves, to hand­bag de­sign and con­struc­tion.

"I'd nev­er sewn be­fore, so I had to start from scratch. The sewing ma­chine scared me!" The stu­dents al­so get hands-on ex­pe­ri­ence as dressers and styl­ists at fash­ion shows, rub­bing shoul­ders with some of the best de­sign­ers in the busi­ness. "They re­al­ly are teach­ing at an in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el," An­toine said en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly. "We have teach­ers from Paris and places like the Fash­ion In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in New York. Peo­ple thought that since it is Trinidad, we wouldn't be do­ing any­thing of worth, but now lots of peo­ple are try­ing to get in­to the pro­gramme."

But don't ex­pect An­toine to give up her spot, even though it's a sac­ri­fice to work and study in such de­mand­ing fields. "Fash­ion is a pas­sion for me. I work and then I come to school right af­ter­ward. I love my job and I love fash­ion. I don't want to give ei­ther of them up, so I'm try­ing my best to bal­ance every­thing," she said. An­toine's mus­es num­ber among the best in the world. She loves Os­car de la Renta's work. And she's al­so keen on Heather Jones' de­signs since they are first rate and show off her Caribbean roots with such flair. "And she's such a sweet per­son too," said An­toine of Jones.

The de­sign­ers she ad­mires aren't ran­dom­ly se­lect­ed. Dress­es are An­toine's fash­ion fo­cus.

"I want my de­signs to be time­less and fem­i­nine, and I want to in­cor­po­rate hand-paint­ing and jew­el­ry in­to my de­signs. I like to em­bell­ish and I love pearls!" Al­though her heart is set on show­ing fash­ion de­signs on the same run­ways as Guc­ci and Dolce & Gab­bana, An­toine has no plans to leave T&T just yet. "I do have a life here, and I don't know what the fu­ture will bring," she said. "But I want to be known as an in­ter­na­tion­al fash­ion de­sign­er, not just a de­sign­er in the Caribbean."