K2K walks audience across The Salt Crossing– Desert Season at mas launch

Bright colours and floral patterns contrasted with dark tones and blacks. Using a script reminiscent of Netflix’s Bridgerton series and its narrator, Lady Whistledown, K2K Alliance & Partners took its audience through its 2024 collection but also addressed issues of gender disparity, slavery and race.

It was not the typical band launch with soca, frenzied bodies and wine and jam. Instead, with the use of pop, techno, R&B, the popular Carnival medium band took the audience at Queen’s Hall through a personal story of slavery, colourism and spirituality.

The launch began promptly at 7 pm at Queen’s Hall, St Ann’s Road, Port of Spain and was followed by an afterparty at Brian Lara’s residence, Knaggs Hill, Port of Spain.

In its opening piece, dancers in floral dresses with hints of the 18th century moved to calm, soft music.

This was followed by K2K's Colour of Courage series which featured former co-president of Savage X Fenty: By Rihanna Christiane Pendarvis. Businesswoman and personality Nicole Dyer-Griffith sat in the role of interviewer as they spoke about race, gender and breaking the glass ceiling.

Prior to the discussion, images of women in various leadership, professional, political and cultural roles through the centuries flashed across the digital backdrop. Among them, Harriet Tubman, Calypso Rose, Josanne Leonard, former president Paula-Mae Weekes and Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar.

The audience erupted into applause when the image of the late calypsonian/singer Denyse Plummer, who died on August 27, appeared on screen.

Pendarvis discussed what it was like growing up in the deep South in the US in the time of segregation, as background to the wider discussion.

She said, “I brought, in all honesty, some of the baggage of that upbringing with me when I moved into my professional career. And what that baggage looked like was this idea that there was your personal life and there was your work life and those two things were separate and distinct.

“You did not talk about your personal life in mixed company, that was what we called it…”

She told a story about having Jewish friends who did not know what it was like for her and her husband as black people in the US.

Pendarvis said she shared the story with Dyer-Griffith and the wider audience to pivot to what it truly means to create “a seat at the table for everyone – women, LGBTQIA+, immigrants, the disabled.

“What it really means to create a seat at the table inside a company, church, family, organisation means that you have to humanise and personalise. Share your lived experiences with people,” she said.

Pendarvis said one of the things she took away from that when she left Savage X Fenty, a brand built on the foundation of diversity and inclusivity, was that people need to shed some of the barriers that kept each other separate by sharing their personal and, sometimes, painful stories.

As a result of this, Savage X Fenty started a programme called Courageous Conversations which started with people of African descent, she said.

Pendarvis said this was a way she approached leadership and added that if people could build empathy for each other the world would be different than it looked today.

The conversation also addressed women and leadership. Pendarvis said there were quantifiable studies that showed companies with diverse teams had better business results.

“The reason why is you are going to get better outcomes. When there are different perspectives and different points of views, you uncover issues that you might not if you just had an organisation where everybody looked the same or had the same background…”

She said while the patriarchy was alive and real it did not mean that there weren’t men and boys who were struggling with their place, while discussing what it was like raising a son and what could be done to ensure that men weren’t left behind.

“The patriarchy is this massive, nebulous thing that still exists but underneath the covers, individual young men and boys need to be supported, need their father figures and the women in their lives help define a new version of masculinity.

“It does not look the same that it did when we were growing up and it shouldn’t. It needs to evolve but they need help in defining what that looks like.

“We need to make sure school environments are not just created for women now to excel. Men need physical outlets. Young boys need physical outlets in school…"

She added, in saying that people were willing to deal with some of the challenges that men are facing today did not negate that there was still progress that needed to be made with women.

Following the discussion, the entertainment continued with showing of K2K Alliance & Partners 2024 Carnival presentation, The Salt Crossing – Desert Season.

The collection has two clusters: The Desert and the Oasis.

Each cluster has three subsections: The ships of the Sahara Desert, The Last Lair of the Empty Quarter, The Saqr of the Deep Desert of Sharjah, The Zellij of Lanterns and The Dome of Prayers, the Al-Ahsa of the Rub’ al Khali and the Desert Bloom Migration – the Black Swallowtail and the Queen Butterfly.

As the costumes paraded across Queen’s Hall stage, dancers moved to the underlying music as the narrator told the story of three personalities from a single family during three different time periods: the Zong massacre which took place in 1781 (the Zong was a British Slave ship on which there was a mass killing of more than 130 enslaved African people); a mixed woman struggling with her identity during the 19th century; and then a young woman talking about her experience on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011, who observed that there was only one other person who looked like her.

There were animal print fabrics on some of the costumes, some printed with a leopard’s face. There was also high contrast with floral print sitting on top of monotone black pieces.

The presentation was interspersed with performances by D’Piano Girl Johanna and jazz singer R’kardo SteVon.

SteVon closed the show with Phil Collins’ 1984 hit, Against All Odds. It ended at 9.20 pm and the audience was shuttled to Brian Lara’s residence for the afterparty.