Makin’ Style 2014 is a fashion graduation showcase and the culmination of the free workshops hosted by Coco Velvet International Fashion Management earlier this year. To Coco Velvet founder, fashion director and consultant Christopher Nathan, the hunt for new local fashion talent to participate in these workshops was extensive and thorough. “We went to Sangre Grande, San Fernando and to Port-of-Spain and scoured rural communities from Grande Riviere to Matura to Moruga and Mayaro to find fashion designers—new talent only, because I was sure they were there.” The main objective of the fashion workshops is “to foster and develop a spirit of entrepreneurship” among its participants. The initiative embraced the approach of fashion training and development at a grassroots level, while still maintaining high standards and quality of the information shared.

This is the fifth edition of the fashion workshops and the Makin’ Style graduation event which began in 2006, and ran again annually from 2008-2010. This year, from a preliminary pool of over 600, there were 92 workshop finalists aged 13-21 years. The workshops began on June 15 and ended on September 7, at Nalis, Port-of-Spain. One of the training modules geared specifically to fashion designers was called Stitch to Market: Introduction to Fashion & Design Technology. The genesis of this course stemmed from Nathan’s experiences with attending fashion week events in T&T, both as a member of the audience as well as behind the scenes. “Every year I have observed that while the collections on the catwalk are visually stimulating, when we inspected the collection backstage there were problems with construction with many of the collections,” Nathan said.

(Photo: backless formal dresses )

He realised the need for design collections to be beautiful on the runway as well as commercially relevant and ready for sale. Nathan acknowledged that some designers he had observed over the years were very new to the industry and mostly self-taught, although with an undeniable passion for fashion design. “I decided that we would offer a fashion designer’s workshop to prepare the designers for Styleweek,” he said. Nathan has big plans for his own upcoming fashion week and trade show, the Caribbean Resort Styleweek 2014, scheduled to start November 2. He plans to invite local retailers to consider the 2015 collections of new, emerging and established local designers and the top participants of the Makin’ Style graduation group.

This year, 16 new designers took part in the Stitch to Market workshop. They were exposed to the fundamentals of the fashion industry and a collections development module facilitated by UTT Caribbean Academy of Fashion Design graduates Sharon Christopher and Lisa See Tai. The designers were given a Styleweek challenge to conceptualise, design and construct six garments for the resort wear market. They were encouraged to infuse subtle Caribbean flavour into their design aesthetic to ensure that the fabrication, use of colour and silhouettes were original, globally on-trend and commercially relevant but also appealed to the aesthetics and utility needs of the Caribbean market.

The winner of the challenge will receive a Scotiabank challenge trophy and a $20,000 Coco Velvet cash award. These workshops were not only for designers. Sixty new models—male, female and plus size—were scouted for and participated in the professional fashion model course. Apart from showcasing the Stitch to Market designer collections, these models will compete for top print and top runway model 2014 titles at the Makin’ Style graduation event. Other fashion talent scouted and trained included fashion stylists, photographers and production event co-ordinators. “We wanted to encourage an all-rounded individual. The models learned commercial modelling technique, the designers learned collections development, the elements of style and fashion, fashion sketching, pattern drafting and how to create a commercially relevant collection. “These youngsters sacrificed their time and their holidays to come to a fashion workshop twice a week, on Fridays and Sundays, and I commend them for that,” Nathan said. At the Makin’ Style graduation showcase, 14 new local fashion designers will debut their collections and a panel of fashion design experts will select the top three student designer collections for inclusion at the inaugural Caribbean Resort Styleweek, Port-of-Spain.

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