High fashion in Chaguaramas

GUESTS have been promised a unique, open-air experience at the O2N Trade Gallery which is an exhibition space that will feature dozens of entrepreneurs from across the creative industries, including fashion, animation, manufacturing and other sectors.

Imagine three levels of non-traditional, theatre-style experiences with the O2N fashion showcase, where Fashion Meets Passion at O2N Style tomorrow at O2 Park in Chaguaramas from 5 pm.

The event will feature designers from TT and the wider Caribbean, including Guyana, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Antigua. Some 22 of them will present capsule collections on the runway.

The fashion showcase will also include performances by top-class entertainers like jazz singer Vaughnette Bigford, musicians Tony Paul and Ron Clarke, Freetown Collective, songstress Bri Celestin, poet Ariana Herbert and dancer La Shaun Prescott, among other exciting features.

O2N style is an innovative, strategic and festival event produced by the Oxygen with Nicole (O2N) Foundation, the brainchild of Nicole Dyer-Griffith, who is working closely with Caribbean fashion guru Richard Young to produce the event.

The forum is designed for ingenious and indigenous critical thinking and expression on issues of empowerment, sustainability and entrepreneurship with women and youth, as its corollary, O2N organisers said.

Among the participating top-notch designers from TT are Claudia Pegus, The Cloth, Heather Jones, Zadd & Eastman, Christian Boucard and Ecliff Elie, Shaun Griffith Perez, Shurnel Oliviere, Dominique La Roche, Dawn Victor, Charu Lochan Dass, Pulchritude Designs, Marlon George (DAWW), Sejoux, Saleem Samuel, Rhion Romany, Cassey Daniel, Dayle Angus, Ted Arthur, Designer Look and K2K Alliance & Partners.

The region will be represented by Sonia Noel of Guyana, Miranda Askie and Shirrine Gillon from Antigua, Kimya Glasgow and Made by Soka designs from St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Annette Bertin of St Lucia.

Since its inception three years ago, O2N has hosted safe space empowerment fora where women’s stories were told as a cathartic form of therapy and as an avenue for liberation for the unique realities of Caribbean women, O2N said.

The brand has garnered regional momentum after successful runs in Trinidad, along with inroads made in Guyana and Antigua, which have attracted participation in the hundreds. The foundation’s ethos has evolved to become a human development and social impact development mandate.

Tomorrow, the O2N Foundation seeks to harness and disseminate the invaluable benefits of this resourceful platform. The experience provides an enabling environment to corral like-minded individuals, so as to enhance life chance and promote sustainable enterprise, O2N said.

“We wish to make our nation and region a better place in which to live, love and labour. Our watchwords – create, connect, cohere,” said Dyer-Griffith.

Young, the creative director and co-producer of the event said, “The burgeoning trajectory of the current fashion industry requires interactive platforms for innovative merchandising of its products and services, for advancing its viability and for substantiating its status as a vital and viable economic sector. As such, the O2N

Foundation has taken up the mantle to strategically create an event to facilitate marketing reach, render media exposure and generate networking opportunity for fashion practitioners and related stakeholder interests from the private and public sectors.”