On De­cem­ber 6, 2019, the Między­nar­o­dowe Cen­trum Kon­gre­sowe (In­ter­na­tion­al Con­gress Cen­tre) in Ka­tow­ice, Poland was home to 77 del­e­gates from around the world all vy­ing for the renowned and cov­et­ed ti­tle of Miss Supra­na­tion­al 2019.

T&T re­turned to the com­pe­ti­tion af­ter a two-year hia­tus un­der new lead­er­ship.

Na­tion­al Fran­chise di­rec­tor, Stephen Jones steered the new­ly formed eight-mem­ber ex­ec­u­tive to vic­to­ry in Poland.

Yia-Loren Gomez, a 28 year old Ari­ma-born and Uni­ver­si­ty Grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine and hold­er of a Mas­ters De­gree in Art & De­sign from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lough­bor­ough, Unit­ed King­dom, took to the com­pe­ti­tion af­ter her lo­cal coro­na­tion here in Trinidad on Sep­tem­ber 8.

Gomez, who stunned the del­e­gates, chap­er­ones, judges, or­gan­is­ers and the view­ers from all across the world with her out­stand­ing Tal­ent per­for­mance of ‘’On My Way’’, a dance fu­sion in­spired by var­i­ous styles of Bal­let and Caribbean Folk, Mod­ern and Cul­tur­al in­ter­pre­ta­tions. This per­for­mance land­ed Yia-Loren in the tal­ent fi­nals where she was recog­nised among the Top 10 per­for­mances of the com­pe­ti­tion.

Lat­er on, this for­mal­ly trained dancer with cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Dance took to the run­way dur­ing the Top Mod­el Fi­nals in a avant garde black and gold K2K Al­liance & Part­ners gown en­ti­tled ‘’SIYA­HAM­BA’’ from their 2018 col­lec­tion - We Stand Unit­ed.

As the com­pe­ti­tion pro­gressed, Yia-Loren re­mained a fore­run­ner to make it to the top 25 place­ment, whilst she con­tin­ued to top the glob­al charts and leader­board in var­i­ous lev­els of the com­pe­ti­tion. T&T shot in­to the spot­light plac­ing 5th in the cov­et­ed Na­tion­al Cos­tume Com­pe­ti­tion with a glo­ri­ous, flex­i­ble and bril­liant cos­tume al­so de­signed by K2K Al­liance & Part­ners en­ti­tled ‘’LUX’’ (latin for light) from their 2019 win­ning Car­ni­val Band of the Year Pre­sen­ta­tion: Through Stained Glass Win­dows. Gomez grace­ful­ly ma­noeu­vred the large back­back and edgy gown to place her as the talk of the com­pe­ti­tion.

Her Evening Gown, in­spired by the en­er­gy sec­tor, de­signed and pro­duced by Richard & An­tho­ny Pro­duc­tions & Con­cepts slayed the fi­nale stage as the pewter and burnt or­ange se­quins and gems hugged Yia’s body like en­er­gy in a gas cham­ber tow­er.

‘’Savonette’’ as it was named by Na­tion­al Di­rec­tor was the gown’s name; a nod and trib­ute to all Trin­bag­o­ni­ans who have suf­fered job loss from the Oil & Gas In­dus­try, pre­sent­ing them with a flame/flick­er of hope for a brighter fu­ture.

Yia-Loren al­so poured her heart in­to her pan­el and supra chat in­ter­views where she emerged the win­ner of the Supra-Chat Episode 9 edg­ing out oth­er pow­er hous­es in the com­pe­ti­tion.

A con­tin­gent of 12 trav­elled to Poland mere days be­fore com­pris­ing of rel­a­tives and well wish­ers from T&T and oth­er parts of the world. How­ev­er, just mere hours be­fore the coro­na­tion night, the pres­i­dent of NOWA Sce­na & the Miss Supra­na­tion­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion Ger­hard Von Lip­in­s­ki made a shock­ing rev­e­la­tion at a pri­vate meet­ing with all the Na­tion­al Di­rec­tors from across the world.

The Miss Supra­na­tion­al Trinidad & To­ba­go Fran­chise was pre­sent­ed with the pres­i­dent’s Miss Supra­na­tion­al Ris­ing Star Award for Best Na­tion­al Fran­chise and out­stand­ing glob­al per­for­mance (es­pe­cial­ly as a new ex­ec­u­tive) com­ing in­to the com­pe­ti­tion.

Jones, ac­com­pa­nied by Cre­ative Di­rec­tor Ra­mon Alex­is re­ceived the most pres­ti­gious award on be­half of the peo­ple of T&T.