What you wear says some­thing about who you are to peo­ple. Your out­fit is a form of self-ex­pres­sion. It can re­flect your lev­el of con­fi­dence and your mood–whether you are dar­ing, fierce, con­fi­dent, de­lib­er­ate, pur­pose­ful or hap­py.

It was no dif­fer­ent at the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of Par­lia­ment’s Fourth Ses­sion last Mon­day at the Red House in Port-of-Spain when par­lia­men­tar­i­ans and oth­er spe­cial guests donned their out­fits and stepped out.

In cloth­ing re­flect­ing their mood or what they stood for, promi­nent per­son­al­i­ties faced sti­fling heat, traf­fic re­stric­tions, and a heavy se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence to at­tend the event.

Her Ex­cel­len­cy Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, wear­ing a sleek, tai­lored ivory pants suit and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar who donned a fuch­sia dress, were fash­ion­ably present. Mrs Sharon Row­ley, the wife of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, wore an eye-catch­ing navy and white out­fit.

Step­ping out­side of tra­di­tion, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son donned a white Tahari jack­et which she bought in the Unit­ed States.

“I’ve been in Par­lia­ment for a long time, and tra­di­tion­al­ly it’s al­ways been a lot of black; as a lawyer, that’s the colour. But I thought white is al­so a nice colour,” she said.

For Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, her choice of colour was more than for the sake of ap­pear­ances. She wore a pur­ple dress for some­one she loved dear­ly.

“I chose the colour be­cause one of my nephews just died. And so, I’m in mourn­ing. I didn’t want to wear black. His favourite colour was pur­ple. I have a dress­mak­er in Ari­ma, and she did [the dress] for me,” Robin­son-Reg­is shared be­fore en­ter­ing the Red House.

At the re­cep­tion, Sham­fa Cud­joe, Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and MP for To­ba­go West, who wore a pink dress, stat­ed why she chose the vivid colour for the cer­e­mo­ny.

“I like the colour pink. I dress ac­cord­ing to my mood, and it’s a new day for us, a new chap­ter as it re­lates to Par­lia­ment. So I chose the colour that makes me feel hap­py. I bought it at Style57 Fash­ion in To­ba­go,” she re­vealed.

Al­so, amongst the crowd was ac­tivist and for­mer tem­po­rary op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Mar­sha Walk­er, who spoke about her choice to wear a yel­low jack­et.

“I chose yel­low (al­so the UNC’s colour code) be­cause I’ve been very vo­cal against my po­lit­i­cal leader (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) right now—I love Cae­sar, but I love Rome more. I do love the coun­try and want the best for the par­ty. This is me re­as­sur­ing every­one that I’ve not crossed the floor, that I still love UNC,” she stat­ed.

Speak­ing on where she got her jack­et, Walk­er said, “I got [the jack­et] from ITNAC (Is There Not A Cause); it’s an NGO. You can do­nate clothes and on the flip side, you can go on and pur­chase clothes. This cost me $25! And I get to know when I shop there that all the funds go to­wards feed­ing the home­less, to­wards a good cause.”

–re­port­ing by Matthew Chin