Culture Box
The headlines in the entertainment pages these days are all too familiar, an endless parade of fashion hit makers, those trying to make it in the business and a string of models still largely unprepared for the catwalk. It feels like overkill.
How much fashion worth seeing could there really be out there and while it is okay to have aspiring ‘designers’ put out lines and then ask people to come see them, it is not okay to have them exhibit sub-par work that clearly underlines how amateur they are.
In the past two weeks the entertainment circuit has been swamped by the designer hopefuls who have been rubbing shoulders with the veterans and we have been fed the usual public relations rhetoric about what “this means for the industry” and the prospects that are out there for those hoping to break in.
Come on, please. When is someone going to come out and say truthfully that fashion here is a risky business, but more critically that nobody is making it unless they were in the business for ages and or if they fly out and fit in someplace good.
To break things down there is nothing wrong with discovering and fostering new talent in the fashion industry here, in fact it is essential if it hopes to survive, but the fancy speeches and polished statements about prospects must include doses of reality and some practicality.
There is something fundamentally wrong, and this is debatable, with designers selecting fresh talent to unleash on the public in a matter of weeks without any tutoring and room for improvement. It seems a better idea for them to take the babies in the industry under their wings and work with them over a period of time (a year or two perhaps) before offering them up when many are clearly not ready.
It is not every day that talent the likes of Andrew Harris, the Telford Sisters, Randy Madray and Sharda Elegon are discovered. Truth is, many of those with potential need time to grow.
That said, it is also about time that someone pointed out that some of the veteran designers here have peaked a few years now and that they keep feeding us the same collections show after show. You see a ‘new’ collection and realize that only a year ago it was featured in entirety except that the colour scheme was different.
Sonia Noel is the current darling of the fashion world here, bringing the fabulous Guyana Model Search shows and pioneering Guyana Fashion Weekend, in addition to breaking out new stars in the Designer Portfolio competition. But Sonia has not fed us a new idea since…well, it’s been that long. Her collections usually come off as ‘same old, same old’.
The same goes for a string of other collections that have been unveiled recently. We got a taste of something new from Michelle Cole-Rose and Olympia Small-Sonaram and the same question arises–are they out of ideas?
Now this raises the issue of whether designers here are constrained to one set of ideas because of the climate — we get dresses, shirts, skirts and pants and that is it. But that cannot be it, it is not so much the designs the issue is the idea. If a designer has an idea and can execute it and bring the public something different every year then that designer is news.
The business is about creativity which means that if a designer lost that spark a long time now then that spells trouble. Who is interested in seeing the same styles every year but in different colours?
