Jon­nelle Far­rell 

Cel­e­brat­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s In­de­pen­dence can take many forms, from wav­ing the na­tion­al flag to dress­ing in the coun­try’s colours of red, white and black.

As the na­tion pre­pares to mark its 64th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence, cre­ativ­i­ty was on full dis­play at Sackville Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, where Janoura’s Cus­tom De­signs Ltd host­ed its sev­enth an­nu­al In­de­pen­dence Day Fash­ion Show com­pe­ti­tion.

Ten par­tic­i­pants, all em­ploy­ees from the Ch­agua­nas and Port-of-Spain branch­es, com­pet­ed. They were chal­lenged to bring the theme, “Un­con­ven­tion­al Ma­te­ri­als,” to life by trans­form­ing every­day house­hold items in­to imag­i­na­tive cos­tume de­signs.

Janoura’s Cus­tom De­signs own­er Han­nah Janoura said the com­pe­ti­tion was about more than fash­ion. She said it stemmed from her love for T&T and her de­sire to cel­e­brate the cre­ativ­i­ty that ex­ists through­out the coun­try.

“The idea be­hind the com­pe­ti­tion was that I love Trinidad. Any­thing that con­cerns Trinidad, all the cre­ative things that we do in Trinidad, I get in­volved,” Janoura ex­plained.

This year’s top prize went to There­sa Clarke for her cre­ation, Scar­let Dreams. Clarke’s de­sign show­cased how or­di­nary ma­te­ri­als can be trans­formed in­to ex­tra­or­di­nary works of art. The piece in­cor­po­rat­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,300 pa­per straws, 65 plas­tic spoons, 25 pa­per nap­kins and three pa­per plates. The spoons were clev­er­ly arranged to de­pict T&T’s na­tion­al bird, the Scar­let Ibis.

Cre­at­ing the win­ning de­sign, how­ev­er, was no easy feat.
Clarke said the project took about three weeks to com­plete and ad­mit­ted there were times when she con­tem­plat­ed giv­ing up. It was her daugh­ter’s en­cour­age­ment that kept her mo­ti­vat­ed, she said.

“My daugh­ter just re­mind­ed me, ‘Mom, Mom, you have to show peo­ple, you have to let peo­ple be able to see your tal­ent, keep go­ing,’ and I did,” she said.

For Clarke, cre­ativ­i­ty came nat­u­ral­ly. She said she has al­ways been drawn to work­ing with her hands and views cre­at­ing as an urge that must be ex­pressed.

She en­cour­aged oth­ers to em­brace their in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty, nur­ture their cre­ativ­i­ty and nev­er be afraid to try some­thing dif­fer­ent.

Clarke al­so ex­pressed ex­cite­ment about cel­e­brat­ing the coun­try’s In­de­pen­dence Day.

“It’s a great thing for our coun­try and a nice an­niver­sary, and every­one is just hap­py for the long week­end,” she said.