When you ask Sonia Noel about the long-term prospects for the local fashion industry her answer does not create the impression that she is looking around for a response that fits the bill. What she has to say may be a trifle long-winded but what it amounts to is that prospects for the local fashion industry are inextricably bound up with the wider Caribbean. She seems to be saying that whatever the local industry may think of itself, it is the manner in which it is perceived by the regional industry and the fact that the global market responds to Guyanese as part of “a Caribbean thing”.
It is – among other things – a matter of market. Noel is outspoken: “Fashion costs and there is no market to speak of, to go around.” Not that she’s pessimistic. She believes that potential for growth derives from the fact that we in the Caribbean “like to be exclusive”.
We dwell on her unpretentiousness about the state of the fashion industry. It’s a subject that she wants to talk about without sounding condescending. She appears genuinely excited about what she says is a surfeit of talent, particularly in the area of design. Support, quite a bit of it, actually, has been forthcoming from the European Union (EU) and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). In August a few of our designers will get a chance to show off their stuff at the London Olympics.
However, a surfeit of nice clothes does not a fashion industry make. “We are only now starting to build a fashion industry,” Noel says. Her own ‘Guyana Fashion Weekend’ has done much to popularize the industry and, she says, it has gotten better over the past five years.
We talk about cheap Chinese imports and the way in which they impact on both the local clothing and the fashion industry. It’s a subject about which Noel has little to say. She believes the all-pervasive force of Chinese industry has left the international community relatively powerless. She takes a sort of nothing-we-can-do-about-it-but-suck it-up-and-move-on approach to what has been the rising decibel level among local merchants and seamstresses about the ‘Chinese invasion’.
There are, she believes, more positive things to talk about; like the fact that CIDA is currently working to have local designs placed in exotic shops connected with the cream of the tourism industry in the Caribbean; and the fact that there are discussions underway about the setting up of a design school in Guyana.
Noel talks about the market beyond Guyana. Tapping into the Caribbean diaspora would be good for the growth of the industry. “Caribbean people enjoy looking different,” she says. “Our fashion tends to be timeless.” There is a market too for fashion associated with exotic weddings.
Noel believes that understanding the fashion industry must begin with an appreciation of the entire range of disciplines that comprise it. She concedes that sometimes local fashion stops at design. “Frankly, it goes way beyond that. There are the seamstresses, the models, the designers, the stylists and the make-up artists. All of them play their own particular roles in making the industry what it is,” she says.
The vision for a local fashion industry goes as far as the likelihood that Guyana could be designated the major factory for regional designers. The issue has already been raised with local manufacturers and the company is keen to secure a share of the regional market.
The barriers to the growth of the industry include limitations in access to fabric. Local designers must travel mostly to Trinidad and Tobago to access what they want.
Noel believes that corporate Guyana needs to give even more support to the fashion industry. “It’s an investment in a lot of talented people in our country,” she says.
She concedes that the private sector has not remained altogether indifferent to the industry and that the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) has expressed an interest in supporting the creative industries. The commercial banks too are beginning to step up to the plate.
As for herself, Noel appears to have nailed her own colours to the local fashion mast, not unmindful of her own business as a designer, but seemingly no less preoccupied with helping to grow the local industry. For someone whose accomplishments in the discipline are known in Guyana and beyond she appears surprisingly prepared to
wait-out the realization of another dream.
