The pos­si­bil­i­ty of rais­ing a Car­ni­val cos­tume pro­duc­tion in­dus­try here is one which needs se­ri­ous at­ten­tion.

And this is in the con­text of the des­per­ate need to build-out a non-en­er­gy eco­nom­ic en­gine as a step along the road to spread­ing growth away from de­pen­dence on one sec­tor.

The mak­ings of such an in­dus­try were put for­ward in yes­ter­day’s edi­tion of the Busi­ness Guardian by two rel­a­tive­ly young lead­ers in fash­ion and de­sign and the pro­duc­tion of mas cos­tumes, swim wear and oth­er sports-type wear.

The ideas of An­na White and Christo­pher Nathan range through the re­cy­cling of Car­ni­val cos­tumes and a re­turn to hav­ing them made by lo­cal seam­stress­es and tai­lors. Of some note too, is the thought to restart the fab­ric-mak­ing fac­to­ries which can then feed in­to lo­cal gar­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing.

In­dige­nous cloth-weav­ing and gar­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing were over­tak­en by more com­pet­i­tive and eas­i­ly ac­cessed im­port­ed cloth­ing. There were too, in­dus­tri­al prob­lems which com­pound­ed the chal­lenges to com­pete against name-brand man­u­fac­tur­ers. How­ev­er, there are al­ways ways and means to counter such hur­dles.

On the sup­ply side of the cur­rent “Made in Chi­na” Car­ni­val im­ports, there have been con­sis­tent dif­fi­cul­ties in get­ting cos­tumes here in time and ap­pro­pri­ate­ly made.

Vi­tal­ly im­por­tant to the po­ten­tial ben­e­fits which can come out of pro­duc­ing cos­tumes and oth­er Car­ni­val-type ap­par­el lo­cal­ly will be the for­eign ex­change saved.

The crit­i­cal fac­tor in all the plan­ning is the ready avail­abil­i­ty of a mar­ket for the prod­ucts used dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son.

There is no re­searched es­ti­mate that we know of re­gard­ing the num­ber of cos­tumes and oth­er styl­ish cloth­ing worn by mas­quer­aders, feters and spec­ta­tors dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son. A good guess will be hun­dreds of thou­sands. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, and as sug­gest­ed by the de­sign­ers-pro­duc­ers, T&T can emerge as the source for Car­ni­val cos­tumes and more for the fes­ti­vals around the re­gion. If we take the think­ing fur­ther, sup­ply­ing the Caribbean-cre­at­ed Car­ni­vals in North Amer­i­ca amongst our own peo­ple can sure­ly be an ad­di­tion­al am­bi­tion.

En­cour­ag­ing­ly, the lo­cal pro­duc­tion of cos­tumes and gar­ments by our es­tab­lished man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor is a thought raised by Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon.

What is al­so ex­cel­lent about the ideas be­ing of­fered is they are com­ing from a seem­ing­ly new breed of en­tre­pre­neurs able to per­ceive of their world dif­fer­ent­ly from sta­tus quo think­ing. Young peo­ple with ideas and en­er­gy need to be lis­tened too and en­cour­aged; they are the fu­ture.

Of im­por­tance too is the sug­ges­tion to utilise the fash­ion pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T in this mul­ti-lay­ered thought.

These are ear­ly frag­ments of de­vel­op­ing an in­dus­try in times of the des­per­ate need to spread and cre­ate new eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty. More­over, the think­ing along the lines of fab­ri­cat­ing fin­ished prod­ucts for lo­cal con­sump­tion and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of spawn­ing an ex­port in­dus­try are too rich and en­tic­ing to ig­nore.

Our coun­try and so­ci­ety are flood­ed with young peo­ple look­ing for di­rec­tion, jobs to achieve their am­bi­tions and to keep them liv­ing con­struc­tive­ly.

For a long time now, we have talked about the cre­ative in­dus­try as a source of growth; it’s on our doorstep to ex­plore.