RYAN BA­CHOO

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

There is a buzz at YU­MA head­quar­ters again. Fi­nal­ly, the kalei­do­scope of colours as­so­ci­at­ed with car­ni­val cos­tum­ing bright­ens the dull dis­play room en­closed by black walls. If you’re not care­ful, you can knock over a man­nequin dis­play­ing the car­ni­val band’s 2023 line of cos­tumes. It wouldn’t be such a big deal if the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic had not wiped out car­ni­val for the last two years, and with it, an in­dus­try that earns peo­ple their pay cheques each month.

Now, de­sign­ers rush in and out of the Tra­garete Road, Port-of-Spain camp. The scene is some­what sim­i­lar at oth­er mas bands’ head­quar­ters. In an­oth­er room of the YU­MA camp cos­tumes lie on a ta­ble per­haps wait­ing to be ex­am­ined or col­lect­ed. There are con­ver­sa­tions one on top of the oth­er. This is a beau­ti­ful chaos that many in the Car­ni­val in­dus­try came to miss in 2021 and 2022. Even as the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion says we are tran­si­tion­ing out of the pan­dem­ic, amid un­cer­tain­ty, the staff press ahead with op­ti­mism that 2023 will mark the re­turn of the great­est show on earth.

And yet, next year’s Car­ni­val, set for Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 20 and Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 21, could be the coun­try’s most spec­tac­u­lar in decades. This is not a loose state­ment. T&T’s 2023 edi­tion of Car­ni­val will be forged from the star­va­tion of the event for the last two years, a rit­u­al that the coun­try was robbed of, the one thing that seems to unite a na­tion that of­ten wants to go in dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions.

Al­ready YU­MA di­rec­tor, Tanya Gomes, is wit­ness­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent. “Af­ter two years of see­ing the mas­quer­aders and lis­ten­ing to them, we have a po­ten­tial new au­di­ence of mas­quer­aders who have not played mas be­fore. We al­so have mas­quer­aders who have not played mas in ten years and 22 years. Don’t ask me the ages of these peo­ple, but they look re­al­ly good,” she jokes.

Yuma director and production manager Tanya Gomes.

SHIRLEYBAHADUR

Keisha Col­lette, who is the cre­ative de­sign­er be­hind the brand Marie Col­lette, has been with YU­MA since 2015. For some­one who “chal­lenges her­self every year to be bet­ter than the last year,” Col­lette ad­mit­ted not be­ing able to de­sign cos­tumes for two years was dis­con­cert­ing. She told us, “It wasn’t a loss just for my in­come and work, but it’s been a loss for my heart. Car­ni­val is my joy, and it is my hap­pi­est time so not hav­ing it crushed me… It was de­mo­ti­vat­ing. I wasn’t one of those de­sign­ers that was able to keep that chip­per up and car­ry on. I re­al­ly fell back, so I’m grate­ful for it to be re­turn­ing.”

Col­lette’s rise in the car­ni­val in­dus­try was rather or­gan­ic. Most peo­ple don’t know she start­ed off de­sign­ing and sell­ing swimwear in 2013 with her brand Marie Col­lette be­fore branch­ing off in­to the car­ni­val as­pect of it. Her pro­file would grow with the band she now serves. YU­MA prides it­self in be­ing “the voice of the young, up­ward­ly mo­bile adult mas­quer­ad­er” and her de­signs con­nect with the tar­get au­di­ence.

In a glit­ter­ing start to her ca­reer, she is cred­it­ed with pop­u­lar­is­ing Mon­day wear in T&T. That too was rather or­gan­ic. “At the start of the cre­ation of Mon­day wear, bands used to give you shorts or T-shirts to use on Mon­day. When I first start­ed to play mas, you wear your bra and shorts… I’m not go­ing to try to make it sound like it was a big, cre­ative thing, I just thought it wasn’t hy­gien­ic to wear this bra all day and then wear the shorts.” Slow­ly, peo­ple caught on and the Mon­day wear had snow­balled in­to what it is to­day, a sep­a­rate out­fit from what is worn on Car­ni­val Tues­day.

Keisha Collette talks about the Marie Collette brand Monday wear during an interview.

SHIRLEYBAHADUR

Col­lette would find suc­cess be­yond T&T with her brand Marie Col­lette. Her de­signs are worn on the streets of Mi­a­mi, Lon­don, Bar­ba­dos, Grena­da, St Lu­cia and St Vin­cent for their Car­ni­vals. She has man­aged to not on­ly break through the in­ter­na­tion­al ceil­ing but al­so in­fil­trate pop­u­lar car­ni­val events around the world. Odd­ly enough, “I’m my worst crit­ic,” she says.

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