KALI­FA SARAH CLYNE

For the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year, there will be no Fash­ion Week Trinidad and To­ba­go. The re­cent ru­mours about the un­cer­tain­ty of stag­ing of this year's event were con­firmed by FWTT chair­man An­tho­ny Ra­hael. In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, Ra­hael said FWTT, which was due to be held from Oc­to­ber 24 to 28, had run out of time in the plan­ning stages with­out def­i­nite de­ci­sions be­ing made. "We al­so found out that the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic Fash­ion Week which is big­ger than ours was hap­pen­ing at the same time in Oc­to­ber and for us to have it lat­er would not have been prac­ti­cal," said Ra­hael.

Asked about Gov­ern­ment fund­ing for the event, Ra­hael said the Plan­ning Min­istry had is­sued a let­ter com­mit­ting to fund­ing the event but added that "fund­ing had been re­scind­ed".

In a T&T Guardian in­ter­view in June, Ra­hael said Fash­ion Week 2011 was not held be­cause of in­suf­fi­cient fund­ing and men­tioned that even with fund­ing this year's event will not hap­pen. Ra­hael said sev­er­al oth­er is­sues such as "the ab­sence of a man­u­fac­tur­ing and pro­duc­tion sec­tor" had al­so led to the de­ci­sion not to move ahead with Fash­ion Week 2012. Plan­ning Min­is­ter Bhoe Tewarie was not aware that the event had been can­celled and de­nied pulling fund­ing. "We com­mit­ted our­selves to fund­ing on the ba­sis that the fash­ion com­mu­ni­ty would be unit­ed in its pur­pose as to what it would be and how and it would be and what was to be achieved," said Min­is­ter Tewarie. "Gov­ern­ment was not in­ter­est­ed in a fash­ion show, we were in­ter­est­ed in some­thing that could help us to build the ba­sics for de­vel­op­ment of a fash­ion in­dus­try." Tewarie said the Min­istry was not sat­is­fied that it was fea­si­ble to do the type of event they had hoped for in 2012. He point­ed to the de­lay in com­ing up with a pro­pos­al, the lev­el of or­gan­i­sa­tion and time frame in­volved and the dif­fer­ences of opin­ion with­in the fash­ion in­dus­try.

Asked whether FWTT had ap­prised the Min­istry of the prob­lems in reach­ing an agree­ment among stake­hold­ers, Tewarie said he had his own un­cer­tain­ties about the uni­ty of the fash­ion in­dus­try be­hind a pro­pos­al sent by Ra­hael. "I called a meet­ing of stake­hold­ers at which it was agreed that they would come back with an­oth­er pro­pos­al. They have not come back with one yet," Tewarie said. "We left the door open for agree­ments to be reached with­in the fash­ion in­dus­try so that they could come to us with a mod­est pro­pos­al fo­cused on lo­cal and re­gion­al mar­kets for 2012 and we would do some­thing more sub­stan­tial in 2013," Tewarie con­clud­ed. Fash­ion de­sign­er Pe­ter Elias said he was dis­ap­point­ed to hear that Fash­ion Week was to be can­celled this year, al­though he ad­mit­ted that the news came as a sur­prise to him. "I'm work­ing fever­ish­ly on my new re­sort col­lec­tion and I'm aware the Min­istry of Plan­ning was go­ing to as­sist in this ven­ture. "Events like these re­quire pre­cise bud­get­ing, de­tailed prepa­ra­tions and many links to en­able the in­vest­ment to be fruit­ful for all in­volved," Elias said.

The can­cel­la­tion of FWTT 2012 will al­so mean the five Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go grad­u­ates promised op­por­tu­ni­ties to show lines at the event will be de­nied the po­ten­tial ex­po­sure. When lo­cal de­sign­er Anya Ay­oung-Chee won the Amer­i­can de­sign com­pe­ti­tion Project Run­way last Oc­to­ber, it was hoped that this would stim­u­late progress in the fash­ion in­dus­try, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar pledged her sup­port for the in­dus­try.