Tr­ishelle Lea­cock is pour­ing her all in­to her pas­sion and mak­ing oth­ers take no­tice. The 26-year-old for­mer na­tion­al track and field ath­lete-turned-fash­ion de­sign­er and en­tre­pre­neur has re­brand­ed her Reign fash­ion line to Kaiso. Swim and was re­cent­ly fea­tured in Marie Claire’s 40 Best Swimwear Brands for Sum­mer 2022 and Essence’s emerg­ing Black women fash­ion de­sign­ers.

For Essence, Lea­cock took charge of her des­tiny, reach­ing out to the mag­a­zine to make them ac­quaint­ed with her brand.

“I strong­ly be­lieve that noth­ing in this life will be hand­ed to us, so we have to find ways to go out and get it. That mind­set is what fu­elled me to start mak­ing those gen­uine con­nec­tions,” she told the Sun­day Guardian re­cent­ly.

It paid off as the Scar­bor­ough na­tive’s tal­ent was recog­nised by Essence, and she was high­light­ed in an April 1 ar­ti­cle along­side up-and-com­ing Black fe­male fash­ion de­sign­ers to know.

A composite of styles from Kaiso. Swim’s Flora & Fauna.

Lea­cock’s Kaiso. Swim la­bel pays homage to the vi­brance and al­lure of her is­land her­itage and ex­press­es her vi­sion of the con­ti­nu­ity of cul­ture through sto­ry­telling and in­no­va­tion. In the word “kaiso”, ka means “go” and iso is in­ter­pret­ed as “for­ward”, she ex­plained, so she hopes to re­flect con­tin­u­ous evo­lu­tion and in­no­va­tion in her brand.

In­cor­po­rat­ing bold prints, clean lines and high-qual­i­ty ma­te­ri­als, Lea­cock aims to make each swim­suit “the per­fect com­bi­na­tion of lux­u­ry and com­fort” while com­ple­ment­ing the body.

A for­mer na­tion­al sprint­er who rep­re­sent­ed T&T as part of the 4x100m re­lay team at the 2014 IAAF World Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships, Lea­cock start­ed track at age 16 and re­ceived a par­tial schol­ar­ship to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi two years lat­er. She, how­ev­er, ad­mit­ted that she had al­ways had an affin­i­ty for fash­ion and a love of swimwear deep down.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi Ad­ver­tis­ing and Mar­ket­ing grad­u­ate made the leap from the track in­to the fash­ion world in Ju­ly 2018 dur­ing her last se­mes­ter at uni­ver­si­ty and found­ed her swimwear la­bel which she first launched as Reign, spe­cial.

With her first col­lec­tion Trou­ble, the self-taught de­sign­er en­coun­tered some teething is­sues and al­so felt a strong dis­con­nect be­tween the name “Reign” and her vi­sion for the brand. Bent on learn­ing more about the fash­ion in­dus­try, she did fur­ther re­search and re­launched as Kaiso. Swim last year. It was all part of the course, Lea­cock felt as she has emerged as a de­sign­er on a mis­sion, with her third col­lec­tion Flo­ra & Fau­na win­ning nods on the in­ter­na­tion­al scene.

Go­ing af­ter her goals is not new to Lea­cock who al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Miss World TT 2020 pageant. She said she was in­flu­enced by the long line of tal­ent­ed in­di­vid­u­als in her fam­i­ly. Her fa­ther George and moth­er Car­ol are the own­ers of Ra­dio Tam­brin in To­ba­go, her old­er sis­ters, Nico­lette and Yolande are for­mer na­tion­al ten­nis play­ers, and her grand­fa­ther George carved stones, made signs and had a mu­se­um in his home, while her oth­er grand­fa­ther Al­fred was a painter.

Ever ready for new op­por­tu­ni­ties, Lea­cock has an ap­pear­ance on a show set to air AMC in the works and may even have a col­lec­tion for men up her sleeves.

Q&A with Tr­ishelle Lea­cock

1. You have been re­cent­ly fea­tured in Marie Claire’s 40 Best Swimwear Brands for Sum­mer 2022 and in Essence’s list of emerg­ing black women fash­ion de­sign­ers you should know. Please tell me, how does it feel to be high­light­ed, and what do you think these ac­co­lades mean for Caribbean women?

It has all been very sur­re­al. I have been work­ing for months on el­e­vat­ing the brand by do­ing re­search and just learn­ing from oth­er brands in and out­side of the fash­ion in­dus­try. The re­brand to Kaiso. Swim came about at per­fect tim­ing be­cause it now al­lows me to give sub­tle hints of where I am from, por­tray what we have to of­fer and show Trinidad and To­ba­go in a pos­i­tive light.

I def­i­nite­ly think it shows Caribbean women that we are ca­pa­ble and pos­sess a lot of tal­ent, so I do hope it gives oth­er women the courage to step out­side of their com­fort zone and pur­sue their dreams. I have had this brand for ap­prox­i­mate­ly four years and I am on­ly now gain­ing mo­men­tum, so just note that it takes time.

2. Tell me about Kaiso. Swim. I read that it’s re­flec­tive of the Caribbean aes­thet­ic, with bold prints and clean shapes that flat­ter the body. To what type of women do you cater?

I be­lieve I cater to women who are not afraid to make a state­ment through their choice of cloth­ing. They are un­apolo­get­i­cal­ly them­selves in their words and how they choose to car­ry them­selves. They are dar­ing and seek­ers of ad­ven­ture!

3. Trac­ing your per­son­al jour­ney, what sparked your in­ter­est in ath­let­ics?

I be­lieve my in­ter­est in ath­let­ics start­ed with how ac­tive I was as a child and be­ing raised by par­ents who were both very ath­let­ic in their younger days. I al­ways loved run­ning, play­ing ten­nis, and try­ing any oth­er sport I could. I knew I had a bit of tal­ent in track and field, so in sec­ondary school, I de­cid­ed to pur­sue track to see where it would take me and al­so so I wouldn’t have any ques­tions on “what if”. My par­ents and grand­ma def­i­nite­ly in­flu­enced me pos­i­tive­ly to pur­sue this. They al­ways pushed me to try new things, so I was not afraid to give track and field a sol­id ef­fort.

4. Is there any­thing you wish to re­flect on about win­ning the par­tial schol­ar­ship to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi at age 18?

I think the num­ber one thing get­ting the schol­ar­ship showed me was that once I put my mind to achiev­ing some­thing and cre­ate a roadmap to achieve what­ev­er goals I set out to ac­com­plish, it is pos­si­ble with God’s guid­ance and strong faith in His plan.

5. How did you move from sprint­ing to fash­ion de­sign? Is it some­thing in which you were al­ways in­ter­est­ed?

I was al­ways in­ter­est­ed in swimwear grow­ing up and would do lit­tle sketch­es, but noth­ing se­ri­ous. It was just nat­ur­al for me to par­tic­i­pate in sports and not re­al­ly look at fash­ion as some­thing to pur­sue be­cause I didn’t have the back­ground knowl­edge. When I went to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi I de­cid­ed to ma­jor in ad­ver­tis­ing with a mi­nor in mar­ket­ing and in my ad­ver­tis­ing ma­jor class­es I was able to learn how to do de­signs but not for fash­ion more for graph­ic de­sign. I then used the skills that I gained in those graph­ic de­sign class­es to de­sign the first swim­suit that I launched along with the help of a graph­ic de­sign­er from To­ba­go– Ter­rel George–who made the el­e­ments for the print. I think the main in­flu­ence came from all my ex­pe­ri­ences and love of swimwear com­ing to the fore­front at a crit­i­cal time of my life. I was deal­ing with a lot of in­juries from track and knew it was time to pur­sue this dream I qui­et­ly had be­fore I grad­u­at­ed and had to en­ter the world of work.

6. Please share any mem­o­ries of your To­ba­go roots that may have in­flu­enced your de­sign­ing tal­ent or pieces.

So many in­flu­ences...but grow­ing up in Scar­bor­ough, my mom and al­so the con­nec­tion I have with my grand­moth­er who ig­nit­ed my love for hear­ing a good sto­ry and learn­ing about dif­fer­ent cul­tures, places and peo­ple around the world. Al­so, the trips I would get to go on around To­ba­go when I was in pri­ma­ry school al­lowed me to see so much of To­ba­go at a young age. My late grand­par­ents, Al­fred James and George Lea­cock Sr, al­so had a great in­flu­ence on me as they were both cre­atives in their own right.

7. As a child, what ca­reer did you dream about?

I don’t think I re­al­ly knew ex­act­ly what I want­ed to be, but I did know that what­ev­er I did, it need­ed to be some­thing that made peo­ple hap­py or feel good!

8. What qual­i­ties do you take from the track in­to fash­ion de­sign­ing?

Def­i­nite­ly the abil­i­ty to push my­self, step out­side of my com­fort zone and not be too afraid of fail­ure. When it comes to track and field, it takes a high lev­el of dis­ci­pline, fo­cus and pas­sion for the sport. For the most part, I have been able to trans­fer those qual­i­ties in­to my work and how I ap­proach shar­ing the brand with peo­ple.

9. Any high points and/or ad­ver­si­ties you faced along the way that you are able to share?

I think the high points would be the lat­est fea­tures and the re­brand which al­lows me to say a lot more with each col­lec­tion. A new lev­el of cre­ativ­i­ty has def­i­nite­ly been un­locked. I think at one point I lost touch with what I want­ed to say with the brand, es­pe­cial­ly com­ing off the first col­lec­tion. A lot of doubt crept in and I wasn’t sure if I would be ca­pa­ble of cre­at­ing more pieces that were of the same stan­dard and pieces that turned heads, but with a lot of men­tal growth, I was able to re­con­nect with my cre­ative side.

10. Any­thing else you wish to say re pur­su­ing one’s dreams?

Just trust God and go af­ter your pas­sion. You will face ups and downs, but it’s all part of the test you get to share when it’s time to share your tes­ti­mo­ny. At that mo­ment, you may be able to in­spire the per­son com­ing up be­hind you.