...Tay­lor Mon­tano gives un­like­ly mod­els, beau­ty and fash­ion cre­atives an out­let

Gillian Cal­iste

Burst­ing from the start­ing blocks post-pan­dem­ic, cre­ative Roger Tay­lor Mon­tano found­ed Fash­ion Fes­ti­val Week Trinidad and To­ba­go (FFWTT). Col­lab­o­rat­ing with Fash­ion En­tre­pre­neurs of Trinidad and To­ba­go (FETT), he has al­ready launched a se­ries of events de­signed to em­pow­er cre­atives in FFWTT’s first edi­tion which will cul­mi­nate from May 19 to 25.

Tay­lor Mon­tano de­cid­ed that 2023 would be a good year for Caribbean peo­ple in­volved or in­ter­est­ed in beau­ty, mod­el­ling and fash­ion to emerge from the back­ground and on­to the front stage as they take charge of their des­tinies, him­self in­clud­ed.

“We’re try­ing to bring every­one who was back­stage to the front of the stage. We’re us­ing av­er­age, every­day peo­ple and train­ing them to be­come mod­els, make-up artists, de­sign­ers, pho­tog­ra­phers, so they could build their port­fo­lios,” Tay­lor Mon­tano re­vealed in an in­ter­view last week.

FFWTT’s vi­sion is to fos­ter an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for and gen­er­ate ex­cite­ment about Caribbean mod­els, fash­ion de­sign­ers, hair­styl­ists, make-up artists, and young cre­ative en­tre­pre­neurs among buy­ers and the me­dia, cre­at­ing a first-class plat­form for cre­atives. Em­pha­sis­ing di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­siv­i­ty, the fes­ti­val of­fers cre­atives a chance to pro­mote and sell their prod­ucts through net­work­ing with lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al fash­ion in­dus­try stake­hold­ers, es­pe­cial­ly those in the Caribbean di­as­po­ra.

Lead­ing off FFWTT’s events was the FACE of Fash­ion Fes­ti­val Week Trinidad and To­ba­go com­pe­ti­tion held on Feb­ru­ary 11 at the Li­ons Club, Port-of-Spain, which Tay­lor Mon­tano de­scribed as a mod­el­ling com­pe­ti­tion with a dif­fer­ence.

 It fea­tured 21 con­tes­tants–the very young, the ma­ture, the full-fig­ured, a con­tes­tant with al­binism, a deaf con­tes­tant, a Miss Plus Uni­verse Trinidad and To­ba­go 2022 par­tic­i­pant, as well as a Miss Uni­verse Trinidad and To­ba­go 2022 par­tic­i­pant, among oth­ers. Rang­ing in age from four years to 55, all had an­swered FFWTT’s on­line mod­el call for can­di­dates with lit­tle to ze­ro mod­el­ling ex­pe­ri­ence.

“Peo­ple tell a lot of these mod­els that they aren’t good enough. We were look­ing for all kinds–short, tall, plus size, ma­ture mod­els–try­ing to give all who want to be on stage a chance be­cause, in the mod­el­ling are­na, you could be a hand mod­el, a face mod­el, a foot mod­el. You don’t have to be six feet tall, you don’t have to be a run­way mod­el, a high fash­ion mod­el per se,” he ex­plained.

Eleven win­ners were award­ed across var­i­ous cat­e­gories and will be head­ing to Toron­to to re­ceive fur­ther train­ing from the True Col­ors Mod­el and Tal­ent agency and pos­si­ble in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure. The 11 will rep­re­sent Trinidad and To­ba­go at the Mon­tre­al Caribbean Fash­ion Week in Sep­tem­ber this year.

A Fash­ion De­sign and Cos­me­tol­ogy grad­u­ate of LaSalle Col­lege Mon­tre­al in Cana­da, Bel­mont-born Tay­lor Mon­tano lived in Cana­da from age five when his par­ents packed up the fam­i­ly and sought out op­por­tu­ni­ties in the North Amer­i­can coun­try. The hair­styl­ist, fash­ion de­sign­er and en­tre­pre­neur has been based in T&T since 2000, work­ing un­der his self-owned com­pa­ny TAY­MO Cre­ations.

Natasha Fran­cis Joseph

Natasha Fran­cis Joseph, 49, a so­cial work­er for 26 years and cer­ti­fied el­der at Canaan Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Dun­can Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do. She cap­tured the Miss Big and Beau­ti­ful and Miss Ma­ture ti­tles at the com­pe­ti­tion.

Why did you en­ter the FACE of FFWTT com­pe­ti­tion?

I en­tered the com­pe­ti­tion af­ter I saw the ad while walk­ing through the mall. I didn’t think of be­ing an el­der, I just thought of it as hav­ing skills and qual­i­ties and show­ing the church in an­oth­er for­mat. It’s not in any way un­god­ly or in­de­cent I spoke to Roger at the mall and he said mod­els don’t have to all be a spe­cif­ic height and weight etc any­more, so try it.

What have you learned from the ex­pe­ri­ence thus far?

I have learnt that you can recre­ate your­self even af­ter 40. When you think you are com­ing down in age and you think God says slow down and think about liv­ing life less, God has put me in the fore­front to show that this is who I am now. I learnt to be con­fi­dent and to recog­nise that who I am–which is God’s cre­ation–is wor­thy.

I’ve al­so learnt the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing a cer­tain lev­el of so­phis­ti­ca­tion and el­e­gance and pre­sent­ing your­self well. Even more so be­cause I won the Big and Beau­ti­ful, and Ma­ture awards, I must en­sure that when I’m in the pub­lic, that is who I am.

How can you now in­spire oth­er women, es­pe­cial­ly, through your field of work?

I am sin­gle and un­mar­ried and at this age, I can of­fer peo­ple a new un­der­stand­ing that you can recre­ate your­self. To a woman who is tired, and look­ing for a new slant in life, I can show the im­por­tance of walk­ing with es­teem, the im­por­tance of un­der­stand­ing that you are won­der­ful­ly and fear­ful­ly made and that you can par­tic­i­pate in ac­tiv­i­ties in fash­ion and still be well-dressed and still be de­cent and up­stand­ing. God in­ter­acts in every as­pect of life and peo­ple should re­alise that God is not caught in a box. Through this, young men, chil­dren, and even the church could see a new as­pect of wom­an­hood.

Teni­cia Gay

Teni­cia Gay, 37, cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive who is a per­son with al­binism (some­one who has a re­duced amount of melanin, or no melanin at all which makes his or her skin and hair very light in colour and makes the per­son vul­ner­a­ble to prob­lems with eye­sight and skin can­cers). She won a Com­mer­cial mod­el ti­tle at the com­pe­ti­tion

I en­tered the com­pe­ti­tion to help me build more con­fi­dence and to try some­thing new that I would have been scared to do be­fore. Al­so, to show that peo­ple who are born with al­binism can do any­thing that they put their minds to.

Tell me a lit­tle about your can­cer jour­ney and the is­sues you had to face when your mom passed dur­ing that time.

In 2014 when I was di­ag­nosed with a skin can­cer called squa­mous cell car­ci­no­ma, I wasn’t sure what it was be­cause when it first came out on my skin, I thought it was a cut and I com­plete­ly ig­nored it un­til the day I went to the doc­tor and got it test­ed. Dur­ing that time, I had a lot of med­ica­tion to take be­fore I had ma­jor surgery. The week of my surgery, my mom fell ill. My mom died the same day as my surgery, so while I was in the hos­pi­tal, she was in the hos­pi­tal and I didn’t know.

Af­ter she passed, my jour­ney was re­al­ly hard be­cause I had mul­ti­ple surg­eries af­ter that–close to 12. What peo­ple don’t know is that peo­ple with al­binism are not sup­posed to be in the sun or any heat. When things come out on my skin, they have to be test­ed and once they show any form of skin can­cer, they have to be re­moved. There was one year I had to do chemo. That was hard.

Dur­ing my jour­ney, I had to thank God for be­ing so amaz­ing, be­cause dur­ing chemo, it was me alone. My mom wasn’t there any­more and my fam­i­ly sup­port sys­tem was not great. So, I had a lot of break­downs but I kept in prayer and I thank God for my church which is Flam­ing Word Min­istry and for my boss. She has been su­per sup­port­ive.

What is your mes­sage to the pub­lic about the al­bi­no com­mu­ni­ty and what do you mean by hav­ing been “oth­ered”?

My mes­sage to the pub­lic about peo­ple born with al­binism is some­thing I have nev­er been asked be­fore but I’m glad you asked it be­cause a lot of peo­ple are not ed­u­cat­ed about peo­ple with al­binism. We are nor­mal hu­man be­ings, the on­ly dif­fer­ence is we have no melanin. If you cut us, we bleed the same blood. We are ed­u­cat­ed, and we are fun. We can do any­thing oth­er hu­mans can do. All I ask is that they re­spect us and ed­u­cate them­selves about peo­ple with al­binism be­cause a lot of peo­ple don’t know that I have to ap­ply sun­block and use long sleeves, and um­brel­las to beat the sun. They don’t know if cer­tain things touch our skin it can burn us and that we can get any form of can­cer eas­i­ly. The re­spect that the pub­lic de­mands is what they should give us.

What have you learnt from the ex­pe­ri­ence thus far?

It opened up my way of think­ing and boost­ed my con­fi­dence and I’m ex­cit­ed to learn more. I have learnt that once you put your mind to some­thing, any­thing is pos­si­ble and the fact that I’ve been through so much, this is a win for me and I know that my mom is up there look­ing at me smil­ing be­cause she was a per­son who al­ways en­cour­aged me.

Lisa Ra­mansar

Deaf mod­el Lisa Ra­mansar (Lisa com­mu­ni­cat­ed via texts, but in the ab­sence of an in­ter­preter, a pre­vi­ous state­ment is used be­low). She won a Com­mer­cial mod­el ti­tle.

I was born and raised in Rio Claro and I am the on­ly deaf child among four sib­lings. De­spite this, I have al­ways been de­ter­mined to live a ful­fill­ing life. One of my pas­sions is sewing and I en­joy cre­at­ing beau­ti­ful dress­es, hand­bags, satin robes, hats, and many oth­er items for fun. My cloth­ing brand is called L’Wink De­signz. I have al­ways had a love for the fash­ion in­dus­try and have been fas­ci­nat­ed by pageants and mod­el­ling.

I be­lieve that it is im­por­tant for the deaf com­mu­ni­ty to see some­one who looks like them suc­ceed in the in­dus­try. I hope that my jour­ney will in­spire oth­ers who are deaf or have a dis­abil­i­ty to chase their dreams and not let their lim­i­ta­tions hold them back.

Karis­sa Aliyah Hal­l­i­day

Karis­sa Aliyah Hal­l­i­day is 15. Her in­ter­ests are writ­ing, Art, mu­sic, read­ing, mod­el­ling, de­sign­ing, gym­nas­tics.

I chose to en­ter this com­pe­ti­tion as I have an ar­dent pas­sion for mod­el­ling. As a dark-skinned young woman, I be­lieve there needs to be a wider por­tray­al of our beau­ty not on­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go but world­wide.

I ab­solute­ly love be­ing on stage! When I’m on stage I am in my el­e­ment. I knew that this process would not on­ly fur­ther my knowl­edge, skills and ca­reer as­pi­ra­tions in fash­ion and mod­el­ling but would al­so build me strong so­cial con­nec­tions and op­por­tu­ni­ties.

What have you learnt from the ex­pe­ri­ence thus far?

From this ven­ture, not on­ly did I gain hands-on ex­pe­ri­ence but I was af­ford­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to help me im­prove and fur­ther fine-tune my as­sets to be able to fur­ther my ca­reer.

I al­so learnt the need for re­silience in this in­dus­try as you have to be sure of your­self, and your po­ten­tial and not be re­liant on oth­ers’ opin­ions, as well as be able to get back up and try again when you make a mis­take.

I am pro­fuse­ly grate­ful for the qual­i­ty of the train­ing, the ex­pe­ri­ence and the FFWTT or­gan­i­sa­tion. I can­not wait to see what is the next step in my path!

For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion, email fash­ion­week­fes­ti­val@gmail.com