Designer Donna Ramsammy-James showcased her 20th local collection last Sunday at her Century Palms Gardens home at a gathering of 140 persons. The Shape 2000 collection, dubbed Unidad, involved 132 eye-catching pieces.
Unidad is derived from Spanish and means unity. The pieces, in an array of colours for both men and women, are simple and comfortable, suited for casual occasions yet elegant enough to be dressed up to make appearances at formal settings.
Since her return in 2000, after living abroad for 25 years, Donna has been designing locally. Each of the pieces were hand painted by the designer and her assistant Sharmilla; the hand painting took an average of three days per piece. Altogether, the collection took nine months to complete. Though this is Donna’s 20th local collection, she has displayed 45 in total with the other 25 being shown in places like London, New York, Miami, Jamaica, Barbados, Suriname and Kenya, among others.
The designer, who is 65 years old, said that this is her final collection of such magnitude. She will henceforth do smaller ones of 50 pieces or less. “This takes too much work and as I get older, it gets harder. Designing is part of my heart, so I’ll always be designing. I am relieved and excited and my adrenaline is pumping and you know all the time it’s a concept, and then I sketch, then I fabricate because we don’t use any fabric you find in Guyana but would import from Ireland, India, China, then it’s made and comes back to us here for painting. When the model first tries it on, I see them one at a time and it’s not until the show that I see that variety of colour coming at me. I’m seeing it the same time that everyone else is seeing it in its entirety, so it always blows my mind… I get a lot of satisfaction from seeing them all come together,” Donna said.
Just as the show was concluding Donna addressed the audience and the models who she thanked for being with her over the years and noted their achievements also. Among them were – lawyers, doctors, engineers, event planners, foreign affairs officials, designers and an entrepreneur. The designer mentioned also that many of the models started out with her just after completing secondary school and now they must move on so the event was a bitter-sweet one for her. The affair saw added excitement and surprise when one of the models, Soyini was proposed to by her boyfriend Vernon. The show turned out to be an auspicious one for the couple who are now looking to be married.
Among those present were members of the diplomatic corps, senior Caricom officials and two government ministers.
For any of these exquisite pieces Donna can be reached via Facebook at Shape Custom Creationz.
