New chapter for The Cloth - fashion house opens at Trinidad Gingerbread House

The Cloth’s expansion to what is now known as the Trinidad Gingerbread House on Carlos Street, Woodbrook, has set the fashion brand’s evolving global presence on a site layered with history, craftsmanship and meaning.

The opening, on December 20, marked a new chapter for the TT fashion house as it approaches its 40th anniversary in 2026, while remaining rooted in the philosophies and places that shaped it.

The new space, one of the rooms at the Trinidad Gingerbread House (not to be confused with “The Gingerbread House” at Queen’s Park West, offers “curated capsule collections” and seasonal releases, alongside elements of local craftsmanship and heritage.

The intention, said founder and designer Robert Young, is not to present everything, but rather “small drops of The Cloth,” a mix of ready-made and experimental pieces. Visitors to the new boutique can have in-house stylings and bespoke fittings, reinforcing the emphasis on clothing as an experience rather than a commodity.

For Young, the significance of the location goes beyond aesthetics or foot traffic. He described the Trinidad Gingerbread House as a place where “codified language” exists.

“Those fretworks are built by African people. The embodied language of space, of sacred technologies and other things exists in the fretwork. This fretwork is steeped in all kinds of liberatory hopes.”

While acknowledging the building likely had a colonial architect, Young said the craftsmen who physically built it were the descendants of those subjected to enforced servitude.

“So there’s a record of somebody’s hopes, dreams, aspirations for themselves, for their space. They would embed things and information…meaningful to them, and also their aspirations for themselves.” So for Young, as always, The Cloth and this new development are about far more than fashion.

“Aspirations for The Cloth and for Trinidad (are) of sovereignty,” he declared. “The Cloth has always tried to navigate sovereignty for my voice, for itself and for other people. It took on a language people understood in symbols and colours and ways of moving.”

Young said he tries to embed this language into the brand’s signature appliqué designs and the shapes, volume and cut of the clothes, which allow them to fit people of many sizes. He described his garments as “spiritual armour.”

Finding his way to fashion

Born in St Joseph, Young had no real interest in academics. He went to Curepe Junior Secondary, St Augustine Senior Comprehensive and Toco Composite. He studied agricultural science and started farming, but eventually decided it was too difficult.

His path into fashion was unplanned and unconventional. He began modelling for a line called Unidentified by designer Cyprian Thomas – but at the fitting for another show by Thomas, he was told he was too thin and dropped from the show.

Soon afterwards, while running errands, Young bought a sewing machine on a whim, despite never having sewn before.

“So…I started to make things, and my brother (stylist and production designer Richard Young) started to wear (them). A woman Richard knew called Karen Barrington, who had a shop in St James, liked the things and wanted me to be a part of a fashion show.”

Young showed his first collection in May 1986, when he was 21. Camille Selvon, now the programme coordinator for Animation Studies at the University of TT and who later became a partner, helped him paint, dye and batik the pieces. In keeping with Young’s political philosophy, the collection included statement garments addressing social issues relevant at the time, with messages such as Free Mandela, Crush Racism and Stop Superpower Aggression.

Although the show featured several well-known designers, it was one of Young’s designs that appeared on the front page of a newspaper afterwards. And later that year, Neal and Massy (as it then was) All Stars contacted him to ask permission to use photographs of his work in a calendar.

In 1987, while visiting the Normandie Hotel in St Ann’s, a friend asked Young if he was there “for the new shop.” He asked the management about it and arranged for The Cloth designs to be sold there. When the shop closed later that year, The Cloth kept the space until 2017, and eventually expanded into other stores.

Unexpected letter arrived

“In 1988, we got a letter from somebody saying they liked the work, and these are the things they want to buy. ‘And if so, send me your prices, and go by’ this man, who happened to be Carlos John, a CL Financial executive who later became a government minister in the UNC administration of 1995-2000,
to get a cheque for the investment, which was in Barbados. And it’s like, ‘What is happening?’

“And The Cloth started selling in Barbados from 1988-2008, right on the waterfront.”

Young has also collaborated with a number of other designers over the years.

“By the 90s, I was working with Denise Carew.”

Others artists with which he collaborated have included designers and artists Adele Todd, Nathalie Phillips and Charla Monroe. Between 2003 and 2011, he produced 11 collections.

Throughout that time, The Cloth never closed, though Young said he worked in ways that were often unorthodox. He admitted he never gave himself “consent” to still be doing The Cloth 40 years after starting it.

Clothes with meaning

From the beginning, Young preferred to tell Indian, African and Indigenous stories, as he puts it, investigating through design the language left by the people whose hands built TT.

Young said his mindset was shaped by his father, Joe Young, a founder of the Transport and Industrial Workers’ Union and a retired member of the Industrial Court. Growing up around ideas of workers’ rights, sovereignty and independence meant he could not, and still does not, create fashion based on sex appeal or status.

At one point, he deliberately used colours, textures and shapes to disorient people, with the aim of forcing them to see him as an individual rather than through labels or boxes imposed by society.

That exploration eventually shifted into what Young described as “spirit-wear” – clothing that creates a comfortable space in which people could be themselves and exist. His clothes celebrate people, their freedom and their bodies.

This focus was one reason he wanted access to sea island cotton from the Caribbean, the finest and rarest cotton in the world, grown exclusively in the region and possibly used by Indigenous people.

“It is difficult for investment to happen in that market, because it is not something that will jump immediately – but it’s the rarest and the most expensive cotton in the world. And we should have sovereignty over it, or it has sovereignty over us, where it tells us what to do and how it wants to sell.

“Right now, you can only buy it through Switzerland, Japan or Italy. Every piece that is grown here goes there.”

In addition to sea island cotton, The Cloth developed a line called Project Blue, using khadi fabric, a high-quality, hand-spun, hand-woven natural fibre cloth from India.

“Because we use an expensive fabric, people have made the assumption that The Cloth is luxury.”

But he insists, “Luxury is not for us. We offer good work. We offer well-made work.”

Flying high, flying far

Over the years, The Cloth has dressed entertainers including David Rudder, Ataklan, 3canal, Etienne Charles, Chantal Esdelle, Moyenne and the Lydians. Its designs have appeared on leading steelbands such as Skiffle Bunch, Invaders, Renegades, Redemption Sound Setters, Exodus and Desperadoes, and have been worn by international artistes including Roberta Flack, David Hinds of English reggae band Steel Pulse and US trumpeter Roy Hargrove.

In 2017, in order to help market and navigate The Cloth in the international industry, Young partnered with British anthropologist Sophie Bufton to create the company The Cloth Caribbean, which Young had actually registered in 1991. It can seem bewildering, but Young says: “There are some opinions that The Cloth was revived in 2017, some opinions that it was rebranded in 2017, some opinions that The Cloth collaborated in 2017, some opinions that The Cloth was founded again in 2017… “Back in the day, we formed a company called Young Seabreeze Cloth, and the latest iteration is now called The Cloth Caribbean…

“But The Cloth cannot be founded twice. And that is part of my struggle with sovereignty – the language and what the Cloth is continuing to be.” Some of what’s important is clear.

“I did nothing else well, but I did this well enough. It’s the only thing I’m good at still.

“So it wasn’t about only making money. I wanted to create and practise sovereignty. That’s how I see it now. Especially with this situation in Trinidad, where it feels like we have no control, sovereignty was important to me. I have to have a voice for myself.”

Young said Bufton, CEO of the company, built a management system for The Cloth and expressed his extreme gratitude for her taking the risk of partnering with him, especially as she was just out of university at the time.

The Cloth has been sold in numerous Caribbean and European countries and is currently stocked in boutiques in Mustique in the Grenadines; Jamaica; Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Japan; Spain; Ukraine; Serbia; Antigua; France; and Portugal.

In recent years, The Cloth has taken part in fashion shows in countries that include Egypt and Portugal. Young’s work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC, the Museum at FIT in New York and Savvy Contemporary in Berlin.

He and his designs have also been featured in two books: Africa’s Fashion Diaspora, curated by Elizabeth Way, and Crafted Kinship: Inside the Creative Practices of Contemporary Black Caribbean Makers, by artist Malene Barnett.

Last year, The Cloth exhibited in the TiDAL ShiFTS Gallery Exhibition in Monaco for Ocean Literacy at the UN Ocean Conference, in partnership with Exclusive Cottons of the Caribbean and the Council on Sustainable Fashion and Design of Grenada.

The brand was also selected by Afreximbank’s Creative African Nexus to present at TRANOÏ, a major show, during both Paris and Tokyo Fashion Weeks.

The Cloth continues to expand to other parts of the world, but Young said he is focused on maintaining his sovereign voice.

And despite all this international exposure, Erthig Road in Belmont remains the home of The Cloth Caribbean Ltd. It moved to Belmont in 2012, initially as a three-month arrangement, but is still based there after more than a decade.

Young said Belmont holds deep personal and historical significance. It is one of the first spaces free Africans occupied and navigated, elements of Carnival suffuse the area, and it’s where his mother, Grace Young, grew up.

Looking back, looking ahead

In addition to fashion, Young produces a Carnival band called Vulgar Fraction. It was named in 1997, but had been in existence before then, reflecting his long-standing engagement with Carnival as both cultural expression and political space.

The small independent mas band which presentations have become cultural touchpoints and masqueraders help design and make their own costumes at workshops leading up to Carnival.

Looking ahead, Young said he would like to establish an “experimental space” in Toco where young people could set up their businesses. He hopes to grow indigo for dye, develop block printing and create a worker-owned co-operative for the people who sew for him, who would work across the region.

He also wants to help develop and share the tools and contacts The Cloth has gained for entering foreign markets, managed by The Cloth, for other designers.

Young also thanked The Cloth community in TT and the Caribbean for its continued support.