Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Miles away from any desert, bazaar or sand dunes, the An­chor­age Beach Club was the scene of Ara­bi­an-style mys­ti­cism as Pa­parazzi un­veiled their Car­ni­val 2027 col­lec­tion, Fes: Whis­pers of the Med­i­na, be­fore crowds of ea­ger spec­ta­tors last Sat­ur­day.

The theme, which fused el­e­ments of Ara­bic fash­ion and cul­ture with a lo­cal Car­ni­val flair, of­fered pa­trons a first glimpse of Pa­parazzi’s road wear for next year’s Car­ni­val.

Even with a slight de­lay in the start of the pre­sen­ta­tion, throngs of par­ty-go­ers kept their pa­tience as they qui­et­ly packed the venue’s stage front, their eyes and cell­phone cam­eras trained on the stage.

But the pa­trons them­selves formed part of the spec­ta­cle as the band’s co-or­di­na­tors cre­at­ed a small path­way through the crowd, while dancers, decked in tra­di­tion­al desert wear com­plete with tur­bans, strut­ted down the aisle, build­ing the sus­pense as low, omi­nous Ara­bi­an mu­sic blared from the speak­ers.

On reach­ing the stage, the mood sud­den­ly changed as the sound of so­ca filled the venue, in­tro­duc­ing the first batch of cos­tumes.

Each cos­tume sought to pay trib­ute to Ara­bic cul­ture and cus­toms, with some wire pieces bent to re­sem­ble the out­lines of domes, minarets and oth­er fix­tures from North African and Mid­dle East­ern ar­chi­tec­ture.

Rich hues of gold, green and turquoise, com­mon­ly used by Ara­bi­an roy­al­ty, were al­so blend­ed in­to cos­tumes for both male and fe­male mas­quer­aders, with feath­ers arranged to re­sem­ble pea­cocks and oth­er birds kept as pets by Ara­bi­an no­bles.

Apart from the de­sign of the cos­tumes, names of sec­tions like Al Kimia, the Ara­bic root word for alche­my rep­re­sent­ing trans­for­ma­tion, As­raq, mean­ing il­lu­mi­na­tion, and Nadi­rah, which means rare, al­so sought to pay trib­ute to the ex­oti­cism of the Near East.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia back­stage, Pa­parazzi’s so­cial me­dia co-or­di­na­tor Ja­son Calderon said con­cep­tu­al­is­ing the theme and de­sign of the cos­tumes be­gan when they pre­sent­ed ‘Elope-Des­ti­na­tion I do’ for this year’s Car­ni­val.

He said dur­ing the re­search phase, the band dis­cov­ered the Mo­roc­can city of Fez, which he said in­spired their cre­ativ­i­ty.

“So we re­al­ly want­ed to take mas­quer­aders on this jour­ney across to Fez and to ex­pe­ri­ence some­thing that is to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from what we would do, so we just want­ed to have some­thing that was to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent ... a new ex­pe­ri­ence for mas­quer­aders.

“Some­thing that was pret­ty, some­thing that was cul­tur­al and some­thing that is known gen­er­al­ly.”

Calderon said he was grate­ful for the ef­forts of all mem­bers, in­clud­ing de­sign­ers, the pro­duc­tion team, mod­els and back­ground dancers, who worked to­geth­er to en­sure the pre­sen­ta­tion was com­plete while stick­ing to the cre­ative vi­sion.

Re­fer­ring to the band’s third-place spot for this year’s Up­town Car­ni­val Im­prove­ment Com­mit­tee (UCIC) Band of the Year in the large band cat­e­go­ry, Calderon said he was op­ti­mistic that high­er ac­co­lades were pos­si­ble.

“Hope­ful­ly this pre­sen­ta­tion brings us to an­oth­er lev­el next year.”

Mod­el Shakel­lah Mun­go, who por­trayed a cos­tume from the Al Kimia sec­tion fea­tur­ing large green feath­ers with gold wiring, said she found the ex­pe­ri­ence en­joy­able and com­fort­able, as the cos­tume was not on­ly vi­su­al­ly ap­peal­ing but com­fort­able for mas­quer­aders.

“The back­pack was very light, I’ve worn some heavy back­packs be­fore, but this one was light.

“It was easy to move, free to move around.”

Mun­go said while peo­ple were still con­sid­er­ing whether or not they should play mas for Car­ni­val 2027, Pa­parazzi was a vi­able op­tion for more rea­sons than one.

“Pa­parazzi is very in­clu­sive; they wel­come every­body.

“If you’ve nev­er played mas be­fore, try it out. Pa­parazzi could be the band for you.”

Even af­ter the pre­sen­ta­tion, the vibes kept pa­trons groov­ing in­to the ear­ly hours of Sun­day morn­ing, as pa­trons con­tin­ued to dis­cuss which cos­tumes were the most mem­o­rable.