The lo­cal fash­ion in­dus­try con­tin­ues to make sig­nif­i­cant strides in show­cas­ing T&T’s tal­ent and, more im­por­tant­ly, prov­ing to be a po­ten­tial eco­nom­ic growth pole.

Vashti Guyadeen, CEO of the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vice In­dus­tries (TTC­SI), told the Busi­ness Guardian that the in­dus­try com­pris­es fash­ion de­sign­ers, jew­ellery and ac­ces­sories de­sign­ers, and func­tion­al de­sign­ers and al­so in­cludes sup­port ser­vices such as mod­els and mod­el man­age­ment agen­cies, cos­me­tol­o­gists, cre­ative di­rec­tors, and pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ties which con­tin­ue to flour­ish.

She not­ed that stake­hold­ers are di­verse—rang­ing from sole-trad­er en­tre­pre­neurs op­er­at­ing at the cot­tage lev­el and ser­vic­ing se­lect clients in the lo­cal mar­ket, to com­pa­nies em­ploy­ing dozens of peo­ple and work­ing to­wards ex­port-readi­ness, if not al­ready ex­port­ing their prod­ucts and/or ser­vices.

In fact, Guyadeen said mi­cro, small and medi­um-sized en­tre­pre­neurs dom­i­nate the lo­cal in­dus­try, across the full spec­trum of the in­dus­try’s con­nect­ed an­cil­lary ser­vices.

Rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies in the in­dus­try, who are do­ing their part to make the sec­tor, sus­tain­able al­so shared their per­spec­tives.

Christa­belle Skin­ner, founder of the Cen­tral In­sti­tute of Cos­me­tol­ogy, for in­stance, has made the nur­tur­ing and ed­u­cat­ing of young tal­ent her rai­son d’être.

“We have to stop train­ing peo­ple to go rent a work­sta­tion or to go and open a small shop, and you live there, and you re­tire from there or you die there. If you make it, you make it and if you go bel­ly up, you go bel­ly up.

“We have to open up their hori­zons. We have to show them what they are learn­ing is a step­ping-stone,” she said.

Skin­ner al­so not­ed a grow­ing sub-mar­ket in the lo­cal fash­ion sec­tor.

“There are fe­male ex­ec­u­tives who have their per­son­al cos­me­tol­o­gist and hair­styl­ist on speed di­al. They don’t make a pub­lic ap­pear­ance with­out their ‘style team’ prepar­ing them first be­fore they show their face in pub­lic. This is an ever-grow­ing ser­vices mar­ket for the new young tal­ent emerg­ing and grad­u­at­ing from train­ing pro­grammes every year,” Skin­ner ex­plained.

An­oth­er grow­ing trend she not­ed comes from an un­like­ly place—the fu­ner­al mar­ket.

“Prepar­ing the dear­ly de­part­ed for their fi­nal rest al­so calls for skills in cos­me­tol­ogy. Fam­i­ly mem­bers say­ing good­bye want to re­mem­ber their loved ones as they were in life. That means dress­ing them well, and en­sur­ing their hair and make-up present them in a beau­ti­ful way and shows them at peace. Peo­ple with that kind of skill make it eas­i­er for fam­i­ly mem­bers dur­ing such a dif­fi­cult and emo­tion­al time. And it can be a lu­cra­tive ca­reer op­tion, too,” Skin­ner not­ed.

Fur­ther, she said there are op­por­tu­ni­ties in the lo­cal en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try with all the com­mer­cials, mu­sic videos and films that are be­ing pro­duced.

And there is an­oth­er area that many be over­looked—pro­vid­ing fash­ion-re­lat­ed ser­vices to tourists.

“Our, cruise ship in­dus­try is de­vel­op­ing, for ex­am­ple. Peo­ple are com­ing to our shores, vis­it­ing our beach­es and oth­er at­trac­tions. They may want their hair trimmed or styled, or to re­touch their hair colour that went crazy in a swim­ming pool. What about peo­ple com­ing here for med­ical treat­ment? Be­ing able to ac­cess fash­ion and cos­me­tol­ogy ser­vices could give them the emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal boost they need to get through a par­tic­u­lar­ly scary time. These are ser­vices our young cos­me­tol­ogy grad­u­ates can con­sid­er spe­cial­is­ing in and earn a very good liv­ing,” Skin­ner not­ed.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she said men are tak­ing their ap­pear­ance and fash­ion choic­es more se­ri­ous­ly, pro­vid­ing yet an­oth­er av­enue for fresh new tal­ent to ex­plore for op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“I think even be­fore the pan­dem­ic, bar­bers start­ed ex­plor­ing how to give their male clients that fin­ished, com­plete look,” Skin­ner said adding, “They start­ed arch­ing their eye­brows and mark­ing their hair­cuts in in­no­v­a­tive and artis­tic ways. Some bar­bers now even do chem­i­cal work as far as tex­tur­is­ing and even colour­ing,” Skin­ner said.

She fur­ther not­ed that men’s skin care and per­son­al groom­ing is now a lu­cra­tive mar­ket, as men are em­brac­ing the con­cept that not on­ly women need to do fa­cials, mois­turise, and have man­i­cures and pedi­cures.

The lo­cal gar­ment in­dus­try al­so con­tin­ues to thrive.

The Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try re­cent­ly re­port­ed that from 2016 to 2021, T&T’s man­u­fac­tur­ers ex­port­ed over $121 mil­lion in gar­ments to var­i­ous des­ti­na­tions.

Rodger Mon­tano, a fash­ion de­sign as well as a cos­me­tol­o­gist, ad­vised that if the next gen­er­a­tion of T&T’s fash­ion in­dus­try stake­hold­ers is to grow, they must be ex­posed to ideas which can open doors for them lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

“Many young peo­ple in dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties as well as those com­ing from a mid­dle-or low­er-in­come back­ground are un­able to make a con­nec­tion be­tween be­ing an ex­cel­lent seam­stress or tai­lor, or hair­styl­ist or make-up artist, and what they see on the in­ter­na­tion­al fash­ion run­ways,” Mon­tano ex­plained.

In this vein, he ap­plaud­ed the Gov­ern­ment for as­sist­ing young women and men to learn skills that could help them be­come en­tre­pre­neurs, in pro­grammes of­fered by agen­cies such as YTEPP, which busi­ness sup­port via en­ti­ties like Ned­co.

How­ev­er, Mon­tano wants them to go be­yond just hus­tling to make a liv­ing, and to thrive in a ca­reer.

“It starts with the qual­i­ty of train­ing they re­ceive. In to­day’s world, sci­ences such as chem­istry, bac­te­ri­ol­o­gy, bi­ol­o­gy are im­por­tant com­po­nents in the ed­u­ca­tion re­ceived by cos­me­tol­o­gists and hair­styl­ists. One’s abil­i­ty to sew re­al­ly well does not make one a de­sign­er. One would need to fur­ther one’s ed­u­ca­tion and learn about as many as­pects of the fash­ion in­dus­try as pos­si­ble—in­clu­sive of cos­me­tol­ogy, hair and make-up—and be­come a pro­fes­sion­al,” he ex­plained.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Mon­tano said men­tor­ship by the el­ders and mas­ters in the in­dus­try is al­so an­oth­er crit­i­cal el­e­ment that must be em­ployed, to give young peo­ple a com­pet­i­tive chance on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket.

Dur­ing the month of No­vem­ber specif­i­cal­ly from 20 to 24, 2023 the TTC­SI will be fo­cus­ing on fash­ion in its ser­vices week which Mon­tano said is a key spot for this coun­try to dom­i­nate and en­sure it gets on the in­ter­na­tion­al cal­en­dar of fash­ion events.

Next year, Mon­tano hopes to have a ma­jor fash­ion ex­po that will see stake­hold­ers in the fash­ion in­dus­try cos­mos ex­hibit­ing their prod­ucts and ser­vices.

“It will be a ma­jor net­work­ing event for de­sign­ers, seam­stress­es and tai­lors, cos­me­tol­o­gists and beau­ti­cians, bar­bers and hair­styl­ists, and the re­tail­ers/buy­ers and sup­pli­ers who sup­port and/or wish to ac­cess their ser­vices,” he added.

Lynette Headley-Ather­ley, pres­i­dent of Fash­ion En­tre­pre­neurs of T&T (FETT) said one of the biggest chal­lenges the in­dus­try faces is on the man­u­fac­tur­ing side.

“New de­sign­ers are emerg­ing every year, but who is pro­vid­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing for their de­signs? Who is do­ing the con­struc­tion of their gar­ments?

“We don’t have a ‘fash­ion dis­trict’ like in oth­er coun­tries, and we still im­port so much of our cloth­ing,” Headley-Ather­ley said.

Stat­ing that there is a place for fash­ion en­tre­pre­neurs at every lev­el, Headley-Ather­ley al­so echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments that pro­grammes un­der Ser­vol and YTEPP—for seam­stress­es and tai­lors— pro­vid­ed many young peo­ple over the years with the skills to set up their own small busi­ness­es and gain a cer­tain lev­el of fi­nan­cial in­de­pen­dence.

De­spite the flood of cheap­er, im­port­ed cloth­ing, she said mak­ing a ca­reer out of be­ing a seam­stress or tai­lor is pos­si­ble be­cause there is still a mar­ket for peo­ple who want hand-made cloth­ing and not fac­to­ry prod­uct.

Just be­fore the pan­dem­ic, FETT launched its own train­ing pro­gramme, teach­ing young peo­ple fash­ion in­dus­try ba­sics such as the right way con­struct cloth­ing pieces.

“Then we would spe­cialise them in that area, so a per­son would be­come a spe­cial­ist at mak­ing skirts or pants or tops.

“We be­lieve this is im­por­tant for in­dus­try growth, to en­sure we will have peo­ple to pro­duce the clothes peo­ple want. We don’t just need de­sign­ers; we al­so need pro­duc­tion,” Headley-Ather­ley ex­plained.

She al­so main­tained that cre­at­ing a fash­ion dis­trict is an­oth­er im­por­tant key to de­vel­op­ing a sus­tain­able fash­ion in­dus­try in T&T.

“We need to cre­ate a place where peo­ple can go and shop for de­sign­er pieces. Peo­ple want that unique touch in cloth­ing the de­sign­er made es­pe­cial­ly for them, re­flect­ing their per­son­al­i­ty and flat­ter­ing their fig­ure.

“Peo­ple want to look good, and they don’t want to see every Tom, Dick and Har­ry in what they have,” Headley-Ather­ley em­pha­sised.