Per­fumer Joey Bartlett start­ed his cos­met­ic line un­der the brand name Haus of Ju­ly in 2015, and it in­clud­ed a show­er gel, body oil, and shim­mer­ing body but­ter.

He has now re­brand­ed un­der the name Joseph Fi­as­co, and his re­cent­ly re­leased orig­i­nal ladies' fra­grance called 'Pa­payo' has al­ready sold out, he said.

Not rest­ing on his lau­rels, the Ari­ma na­tive has a male cologne called 'Bha Jhon', and a body oil called 'Can­boulay' in the pipeline.

For Christ­mas Bartlett in­tends to bring out a home-made wine that will make you 'Kilke­tay' (lean to one side/stag­ger); that's the name, and he will al­so be launch­ing a book on lo­cal folk­lore set in his fa­ther's home town of Tal­paro.

Speak­ing to Sun­day Guardian on Thurs­day Bartlett said "I want­ed my brand to have a cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty. To com­ple­ment that, I've writ­ten a book based on lo­cal folk­lore called 'There's Some­thing Strange Hap­pen­ing In Tal­paro'.

"As a part-time pho­tog­ra­ph­er edit­ing pho­tos of peo­ple, I ob­served their skin tex­tures that a lot of their prod­ucts were for peo­ple from the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty who had a dif­fer­ent cli­mate to ours.

"I de­cid­ed to look in­to skin­care prod­ucts, try­ing as best as pos­si­ble to source in­gre­di­ents lo­cal­ly.

"I li­aised with an in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny for sev­er­al months try­ing to fine-tune a scent that was sat­is­fy­ing to me and felt it was ap­pro­pri­ate to start off with the fra­grance for the com­pa­ny."

Papayo perfume

He felt that gov­ern­ments past and present had not done enough to pre­serve T&T's cul­ture. Bartlett ex­plained that he want­ed to have the coun­try's unique col­lo­qui­al terms used in a mar­ketable way that peo­ple could see, feel, ex­pe­ri­ence and have a sense of pa­tri­o­tism when they hear them.

His next prod­uct, the body oil 'Can­boulay', will have a card at­tached giv­ing a brief his­to­ry of the Can­boulay event. Bartlett said this was an ed­u­ca­tion­al as­pect for younger peo­ple in the In­sta­gram gen­er­a­tion to un­der­stand its his­to­ry and not just for Car­ni­val.

Re­gard­ing the book, he re­lat­ed that it start­ed off as a cof­fee ta­ble book when he was on va­ca­tion with his aunt in the US in 2019, dis­cussing it.

Ac­cord­ing to Bartlett, he didn't feel com­fort­able do­ing a cof­fee ta­ble book, it could be so much more be­cause there were so many missed op­por­tu­ni­ties to mar­ket T&T's rich cul­ture and her­itage and to cre­ate some­thing sub­stan­tial.

The for­mer in­sur­ance claims tech­ni­cian dis­closed that he grew up in Tal­paro where the book is set, while his moth­er was from Cal­vary Hill, Ari­ma. He de­scribed Tal­paro, where his fa­ther still lives, as a hid­den gem which has sev­er­al choco­late fac­to­ries, tea shops, and an eco-re­sort. There's Some­thing Strange Hap­pen­ing In Tal­paro's ten­ta­tive re­lease date is De­cem­ber 4.

Bartlett in­di­cat­ed that when he vis­it­ed oth­er coun­tries such as Guyana, St Vin­cent, St Lu­cia, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Pana­ma, Venezuela and Mar­gari­ta, the peo­ple ex­ud­ed pride in dis­play­ing their cul­ture, while Trinida­di­ans were al­so glad to talk about and share their cul­ture; they could be more ex­u­ber­ant like their Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can neigh­bours.

Bartlett is on In­sta­gram: https://in­sta­gram.com/joseph­fi­as­co868?utm_medi­um=copy_link