Yia-Loren Gomez is a con­cep­tu­al artist, de­sign­er and busi­ness­woman fo­cused on var­i­ous forms of art­work and de­signs with a con­cen­tra­tion on light­ing fix­tures. While at the Caribbean School of Dance, she at­tained her RAD cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Dance UK, spe­cial­is­ing in a range of dance gen­res in­clud­ing bal­let and con­tem­po­rary.

Yia-Loren has rep­re­sent­ed T&T with the Meta­mor­pho­sis Dance Com­pa­ny on many oc­ca­sions both in­ter­na­tion­al and lo­cal­ly. Her love of dance and art in­ter­twine, giv­ing cre­ative iden­ti­ty to her so­bri­quet as a mul­ti­di­men­sion­al artist—the ge­net­ic strains which can be seen in all of her work. She com­plet­ed her BA in Vi­su­al Arts in 2013 at the Uni­ver­si­ty of The West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine and then went on to teach at the Maria Regi­na Grade School. It is there that she dis­cov­ered her deep love for chil­dren and help­ing them to har­ness their “in­ner light’’ through artis­tic and cre­ative ex­pres­sions. This new­found love for youth ad­vo­ca­cy and ed­u­ca­tion gal­vanised her to read for a Mas­ter’s De­gree at Lough­bor­ough School of Arts UK, where she delved fur­ther in­to the re­search and de­vel­op­ment of light­ing and de­sign.

In 2017, she grad­u­at­ed and re­turned to Trinidad where she lat­er of­fi­cial­ly es­tab­lished her own busi­ness—YIA De­signs Com­pa­ny Ltd.

To­day, Yia-Loren stands proud­ly as the Miss Supra­na­tion­al T&T who will rep­re­sent this coun­try at the 11th Miss Supra­na­tion­al Pageant in Poland in De­cem­ber. Miss Supra­na­tion­al T&T rep­re­sents the mod­ern, suc­cess-dri­ven en­tre­pre­neur­ial woman with nat­ur­al beau­ty, dy­nam­ic charis­ma, warm per­son­al­i­ty and a de­sire to use her at­trib­ut­es for so­cial in­flu­ence on lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al plat­forms. In a WE Mag in­ter­view, Yia-Loren opened up about her jour­ney in the pageant that helped us to un­der­stand why she is so de­serv­ing of the ti­tle.

Tell us about your de­ci­sion to get in­to the world of beau­ty pageants?

The Miss Supra­na­tion­al T&T fo­cus­es on the woman who pos­sess­es a #supraqual­i­ty. This means that for us as young women, we are en­cour­aged to think more than phys­i­cal beau­ty, glam­orous cam­paigns or any oth­er stereo­type that is of­ten as­so­ci­at­ed with the beau­ty and fash­ion in­dus­try. For the Supra-brand, young men (Mis­ter Supra­na­tion­al) and women (Miss Supra­na­tion­al) are en­cour­aged to de­vel­op a bal­ance be­tween the “head and heart’’. In oth­er words, for the hope­ful del­e­gate, he/she must be fo­cused on one’s ca­reer and dri­ven by be­com­ing their own #supra­boss. Of course, I was at­tract­ed to this since as a de­sign­er and per­former the op­por­tu­ni­ties for per­son­al ad­vance­ment in the world of busi­ness are not as clear­ly cut out in re­la­tion to oth­er more pres­ti­gious pro­fes­sions. When I was six years old, I was a Lit­tle Miss T&T (Queen of Beau­ty and In­tel­li­gence); my aunt Ann-Marie used to de­sign and pro­duce East­er bon­nets which I would pa­rade. Fi­nal­ly, I won the East­er Bon­net Princess at the age of 12. It is this same Aunt who en­cour­aged me to at­tend the Na­tion­al Screen­ing at the Queen’s Hall on June 22 of this year. Many of my friends and close rel­a­tives were of the opin­ion that I should try out for Miss Uni­verse or Miss World but my mind was re­al­ly fo­cused on com­plet­ing my ed­u­ca­tion and gain­ing some life ex­pe­ri­ence. I left that screen­ing feel­ing ex­treme­ly re­lieved and proud that I was able to sit com­fort­ably be­fore a very dis­tin­guished pan­el of ex­perts and walk out se­cur­ing a place in the fi­nals. I guess I did pret­ty well af­ter all.

Did you have to face any chal­lenges in the prepa­ra­tion for the lo­cal leg of the com­pe­ti­tion? How did you deal with it?

Most beau­ty pageants have a height and body type and I am not ex­act­ly the ide­al pro­file for what you usu­al­ly see on stage. I am a bit short­er and armed with a dancer’s physique. I be­lieve that God made me in this def­i­nite height and if I was but a half an inch taller or short­er, I just sim­ply won’t be the same Yia. But what is life with­out tak­ing a risk and go­ing against the odds? I used my pas­sion for my work and arts to warm the judges, slapped on some killer heels and walked with all the pump and per­son­al­i­ty to wow the au­di­ence. I man­aged to con­vince the judges that I un­der­stood and re­spect­ed the dis­ci­pline and de­ter­mi­na­tion in­volved in achiev­ing a set, health­i­er and more toned out­look. So, I chal­lenged my­self to re­turn to the gym with the com­mit­ment of my per­son­al train­er Roger Mal­co, who helped me in at­tain­ing the sig­nif­i­cant body ton­ing cou­pled with MSTT’s Fit­ness Spon­sor Uber­lifeTT. I’ve al­ways be­lieved that beau­ty is sub­jec­tive and is ever chang­ing in a fast de­vel­op­ing in­dus­try. Whilst it did get to me (that I was one of the short­er girls in the pageant hop­ing to com­pete against 80 plus del­e­gates from across the world who might be taller, slim­mer and more ex­pe­ri­enced), I knew that now was an op­por­tune time to wit­ness to my be­lief. My part in this com­pe­ti­tion is not just for Yia, but al­so on be­half of the many oth­er young women who may be in­se­cure and find­ing it dif­fi­cult to come to terms with their own quirks.

Who was your role mod­el as a child and what ex­am­ple do you want to be for young, fe­male pro­fes­sion­als who may be in­ter­est­ed in pageantry?

My fa­ther has al­ways been, to me at least, a good de­f­i­n­i­tion of some­one that peo­ple should em­u­late. Even af­ter his pass­ing, his life lessons and guid­ance live on which I think is the mark of a true role mod­el; be­ing able to have a pos­i­tive in­flu­ence on some­one’s life even af­ter leav­ing this earth­ly life.

For me, this is what I would like to imag­ine as a good ex­am­ple. My fa­ther taught us the val­ue of see­ing the good in oth­ers, dis­cern­ing the truth in sit­u­a­tions of de­ceit and ex­er­cis­ing wis­dom in mak­ing de­ci­sions that would al­so af­fect the lives of oth­ers. I know for sure that my for­ma­tion is a liv­ing ex­am­ple of what dad would have want­ed for his chil­dren and this is what I en­cour­age oth­er young men and women to con­sid­er: that life is a blank can­vas and we are all painters by virtue of our God-giv­en gifts and skills, life ex­pe­ri­ences and pas­sions. Pageantry is just a con­duit in this di­verse project called life and if we found the courage to see be­yond the con­duit, then maybe all of the things we have stored up and called po­ten­tial­i­ty might be­come ac­tu­al­i­ty.

Why do you do what you do?

If I was not do­ing what I did, then who is Yia-Loren? I am pas­sion­ate about the arts and giv­ing back to the var­i­ous art­forms be­cause this is what I know. When I start­ed danc­ing at age six, I felt it with­in me that I need­ed to move and I had to ful­fil this de­sire. Dance has and will al­ways be my breath­ing space. I love the ab­solute free­dom of my body and mind when I dance. From the mo­ment I en­ter the realm of dance I can feel every nerve, every fi­bre, all the en­er­gies of my be­ing reach­ing in­to some­thing sur­re­al, some­thing sa­cred... some­thing spe­cial. I for­ev­er go back to dance when it comes to my art and de­sign, be­cause it is so in­trin­sic to me and this is my in­spi­ra­tion. It is such a dy­nam­ic duo that go hand in hand nat­u­ral­ly, and I want to share this with the world. There are many chil­dren who do not have par­ents sup­port­ing them in their choic­es of ca­reer, es­pe­cial­ly in the arts and so for that, I am tru­ly in­debt­ed to both my fa­ther and moth­er be­cause they trust­ed that once I loved what I did, they would be hap­py. The word mul­ti­di­men­sion­al grows with me be­cause I am al­ways con­stant­ly try­ing to sur­round my­self with cre­ative ideas and peo­ple alike, which broad­ens my vi­sion and not lim­it me to one set thing. These mul­ti-lay­ers col­lec­tive­ly chan­nel who I am to­day and who I want to be­come.

Pho­tos | Yaisa Tang­well Pho­tog­ra­phy