Fashion and food at Hilton

Port of Spain Fashion Week (POSFW), in collaboration with the Hilton Trinidad, hosted a Christmas fashion brunch, Fashion on the Hill, on December 15, at the Herbs and Spices Restaurant. It featured designs by Shaun Griffith Perez as he launched his 2019/2020 collection, Rejuvenate and SM Warner’s Heart With Attitude.

This programme is part of a monthly fashion series that will feature more collections of TT’s top designers, as the POSFW team continues with its goal of boosting and creating real opportunities for various stakeholders of the local fashion industry.

Crystal Cunningham, PR and media promotions manager, POSFW, explained Fashion on the Hill will take place on the third Saturday of every month at the Hilton. Its aim is to not only provide a monthly platform for local designers and artisans to share and market their locally designed brands/products, but also to facilitate direct retail opportunities with Hilton's international clientele, while targeting the local market through brunch.

Olivier Manmaire, general manager, Hilton Trinidad said at the launch of the event last September, two years ago the Hilton hotel was on a mission to pay tribute to TT’s cultural legacy.

He added: “Our real aim with POSFW is to continue over time, to provide local designers with an outlet at the Hilton to promote themselves, in keeping with our mission to embrace the community and promote sustainability for the island.”

Brunch on Sunday included appetisers such as chicken quiche, smoked salmon platter, and from the carvery, passion-fruit-glazed ham, along with French onion soup.

There was a variety from which to choose at the salad bar, and among the hot dishes were grilled steak with mushroom sauce, roasted turkey breast and sauteed mixed seafood, and for dessert, Trini fruit cake, chocolate Yule logs and baked panna cotta and more.

While patrons dined, models did justice to Griffith Perez’s Warrior designs.

Perez told Newsday the collection was inspired by the Masai tribe, and how they greet visitors, and also how a young man becomes a man in the village, by going out and killing a lion and bringing it home.

“And then I fused it with our Caribbean aesthetic, which is diverse and multicultural. I like that colourful effect.”

Perez, with 30 years in the industry, said he targets the outgoing and party socialite clients.

His brand is 14 years old.

Sheldon Warner of SM Warner described his collection, Just Shine, as an art-with-attitude, hand-painted clothing line.

“I was just going through the whole process of people who are going through their challenges and whatever they have in life, etc. It’s just to push through and shine no matter what.

He said the use of black fabric on which he personally painted on the red and white designs was to show off national pride.

SM Warner has been in existence since 1997. In 2001, Warner took a hiatus then came back in 2011, doing Barbados Fashion Week and San Fernando Fashion Week, among others.

He said he feels fantastic about the collection.

“I love it. Normally the aesthetic of the brand is to really create a simple canvas, so it’s normally that open, flowing, resort kind of feel, using natural fabrics, so the canvas shape is more or less the same thing. But the whole flow with the black and the whites painted on the blacks and so on, I am very happy about it."