Ten years in, the Lost Tribe has made its mark on the Car­ni­val in­dus­try.

But in its 10th an­niver­sary, the band is hop­ing to ex­pand the reach of its de­sign­ers by high­light­ing the im­pact of Car­ni­val on fash­ion while al­so find­ing a new lane of sus­tain­abil­i­ty for the band.

Co-founder, band leader and cre­ative di­rec­tor of the mas band, Valmi­ki Ma­haraj said sus­tain­abil­i­ty has been a fo­cus of the band since its in­cep­tion, even be­fore en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty be­came buzz words in the cor­po­rate world.

“This year, nine years now go­ing in­to 10, sus­tain­abil­i­ty has al­ways been our cor­ner­stone. And over the years, when we start­ed this, the word sus­tain­abil­i­ty was not used in our cir­cles with the vigour and in­ten­si­ty that it is used right now. In fact, to be hon­est, I can’t re­mem­ber it be­ing used at all,” said Ma­haraj in a phone in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian.

“There have al­ways been green ini­tia­tives. There was al­ways (a group) work­ing against gen­der bias, work­ing against dis­crim­i­na­tion, but they op­er­at­ed in their own seg­ments, rather than be­ing al­to­geth­er in a ma­jor way.”

Over the years the band has worked on en­sur­ing its de­signs are not sole­ly one-use items for the black car­pet on­ly. At the same time, the band has found an­oth­er av­enue for its de­sign­ers to earn rev­enue.

One of its most re­cent in­no­va­tions, which is a con­tin­u­a­tion of Lost Tribe’s ob­jec­tive to make sure the cos­tumes don’t go in­to the dust­bin, is a part­ner­ship with 212 (Blaanix) to set up a pop-up store sell­ing Lost Tribe mer­chan­dise in Port-of-Spain.

“So ba­si­cal­ly, for years, mas­quer­aders have been ask­ing me to pur­chase some of our Lost Tribe items from sec­tions that they didn’t play in be­cause they re­al­ly liked them for fash­ion. Just to add to their wardrobes. For ex­am­ple, if some­body is play­ing the red sec­tion, the ma­jor­i­ty of the cos­tume will be avail­able for them to use again. We pro­duce the (cos­tumes) in a way so they can be washed and used again, whether it be ac­ces­sories or ac­tu­al clothes, es­pe­cial­ly for the guys. All their pants, all their hats, al­ways de­signed with fash­ion in mind,” said Ma­haraj, who ex­plained even with in­ter­est from with­in its tra­di­tion­al clien­tele, the band strug­gled to sell the items.

It is hoped this will change with this project, with a more cen­tralised lo­ca­tion for the sales.

“It was dif­fi­cult, even though we tried many times to do pop up shops but it’s not our core busi­ness so the mod­el wasn’t re­al­ly work­ing for us. So we had some dis­cus­sions, with Josi­ah Fletch­er who is the own­er of 212 Blaanix, and we were able to form what we call the MAShop pop-up space, where every Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary—that’s the in­ten­tion mov­ing for­ward—Lost Tribe is go­ing to open this store this year on the Fred­er­ick St lo­ca­tion, hope­ful­ly next year, and we sell some of the items that we have avail­able from dif­fer­ent sec­tions from years pri­or,” he said.

So far, there has been some pos­i­tive re­sponse to the part­ner­ship.

“We sold some pieces from our Mon­day col­lec­tion, and start­ing on Sat­ur­day, we launched the T&T Car­ni­val, 2025 merch line that we have avail­able as well. And again, all of this was done for two things. One, is the ef­fort to be able to keep things in ro­ta­tion, make them ac­ces­si­ble, and show the con­nec­tion be­tween Car­ni­val and fash­ion. And then al­so, be­cause peo­ple have been ask­ing us for a merch line,” he said.

That aside the band has seen suc­cess in both its cos­tume sales and its events. Ma­haraj said he was hum­bled by the band’s sales with cos­tumes most­ly sold out. How­ev­er, he said that out of con­cern with the fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion many are fac­ing with ris­ing costs, the Tribe group ad­just­ed its strat­e­gy by launch­ing ear­li­er and ex­pand­ing the pay win­dow for reg­is­tra­tion and com­ple­tion of the pur­chase of cos­tumes.

“We launched ear­li­er. So we launched the first week of Ju­ly, which is ap­prox­i­mate­ly three weeks ear­li­er than we nor­mal­ly do. That was meant to give mas­quer­aders some ex­tra time and one ex­tra pay­check to be able to help with their over­all ex­pens­es. So when we say ex­pens­es, not on­ly ex­pens­es to us, but over­all, plan­ning for the sea­son, be­cause, peo­ple will ap­proach the sea­son con­sid­er­ing out­fit, shoes, make-up, hair, every­thing al­to­geth­er. So with that re­search and plan­ning for what these ex­pe­ri­ences are for the en­tire Car­ni­val sea­son we in­tend­ed to give them that ex­tra time by launch­ing ear­li­er,” said Ma­haraj.

He was al­so pleased that the third edi­tion of the band’s event Fete Yard was suc­cess­ful.

The event, which car­ried on its tra­di­tion of be­ing based on a tra­di­tion­al as­pect of Car­ni­val with a stick fight­ing theme, moved lo­ca­tions from the top of Fur­ness Car Park to ANSA Car Park on In­de­pen­dence Square.

How­ev­er, Ma­haraj said it was cru­cial to keep an event like that in down­town Port of Spain.

“We moved to the ANSA car park and ANSA’s team was re­al­ly ac­com­mo­dat­ing to us when we spoke to them about what the prod­uct is and what we want to achieve. Al­so speak­ing to them about why it was so im­por­tant for us to have the par­ty in Port-of-Spain. It’s kind of the foun­da­tion up­on which the par­ty start­ed. And then we would like to con­tin­ue with as well, for that par­ty to con­tin­ue be­ing in town,” said Ma­haraj.

The Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege alum­ni said he no­ticed that many of Lost Tribe’s mas­quer­aders do not have a con­nec­tion to down­town Port-of-Spain. He not­ed that hav­ing that con­nec­tion with Port-of-Spain from his school days helped him push for the Lost Tribe mas com­mu­ni­ty to get re-ac­quaint­ed with the city.

“I felt like that ex­pe­ri­ence and the re­la­tion­ship we have with town is some­thing that I want­ed to re-ig­nite in the life of the mas­quer­ad­er.

“Many of our mas­quer­aders do not touch Port-of-Spain at all. One of the main stim­uli for (Fete Yard) be­ing there is that when we trav­el we al­ways par­ty in city cen­tres. You know, like all around the world, maybe in Bris­tol, in down­town Mi­a­mi, when you’re in New York, you’re in the mid­dle of the city. Lon­don, any­where you go, you’re al­ways in a city cen­tre par­ty­ing be­fore any­where else. That isn’t the case for us here right now. And I want­ed to re­mind peo­ple that our space is just as beau­ti­ful as theirs,” he said.

Ma­haraj said see­ing the event’s pho­tographs af­ter, with per­form­ers and par­ty­go­ers en­joy­ing them­selves with Port-of-Spain’s sky­line be­hind them heart­ened him great­ly.