With the Carnival 2017 mas band launch cycle almost complete, fun-lovers had the opportunity to add another level of excitement in the build up to the national festival, through the unveiling of a collection of Monday wear design concepts. 

In Chancellor was the title given to the event, held at the Knaggs Hill residence of former West Indies batting star Brian Charles Lara on October 22, where his girlfriend, Miss Scotland Jamey Bowers, joined Shawn Dhanraj, Ryan Chan, Marie-Colette for 212 Location and Dominic Hutch, as part of a ten-member designer cast that showcased more than forty pieces collectively. 

Laura Narayansingh, LSR Designs, Trinidad Carnival Dairy, Summerjade Swimwear and Humzee completed the list of creators at the evening’s signature event. 

Initiate Novelty, led by Kristen Camacho and Irwin Hackshaw, collaborated with Lara on the presentation. 

With the tradition of having masqueraders adorned in full Carnival costume on Carnival Monday and Tuesday now taboo, came the trend where street partiers dressed in parts of their costume on day one of the National Carnival Bands Association’s Parade of the Bands with self-styled embellishments. The full kit was only revealed on day two. 

As fate would have it, revellers introduced their own-choice, which gave rise to the specialty Monday wear concept. 

Camacho said with the backing of Lara, the event was realised. It started because they believed there were too many repeat events and that the market needed something new. 

After launching the Initiate Novelty brand back in July at RuStreet, St Clair, the outfit followed up with an event titled Gender Wars (Sports day), in August, held at St Mary’s Grounds. The success of that event fuelled the team’s ambitions and in came the Carnival booster. 

“The Monday wear event was something we also came up with as being new and different. Monday wear for Carnival is a fairly new concept in T&T, but it is definitely trending and we see it developing further in the next couple years. We thought it would be a great idea to put on an event where we gave local designers a platform to showcase their designs to an audience who would be interested in purchasing these designs for Carnival 2017,” she said. 

Camacho added, “Brian Lara had the fantastic idea to also add the Haitian Donation aspect to the event, which gave us and our patrons a chance to give back. We partnered with Lara and Jamey Bowers and the event was definitely a success as the feedback from designers and patrons has been overwhelming. We are happy to have had our first successful Monday wear fashion show and look forward to making it an annual event.”

Source : Guardian