Local Fashion Designer, Junette Stuart, believes that Guyana’s new oil and gas-driven economy can provide a ‘leg up’ for various other long – suppressed entrepreneurial pursuits that are now being afforded that opportunity and to which, before oil and gas, would have had a lesser chance of attracting serious entrepreneurial openings in the local fashion sector, for example, to which she has dedicated a considerable part of her own adult life.
Junette believes that the opportunities to which the local fashion sector can look to, going forward, are likely to be derived both from shifting internal tastes and trends that will see both women and men paying more attention to “the exterior.” This, she says, will also be derived from the fact that we are now becoming more aware that “the world is now looking at Guyana more closely.” Beyond that, she believes that the changing outlook for Guyana is beginning to motivate us with an inclination to “show off,” or to “show the world what we can do.” She believes that the more the name of Guyana “comes up” on the international stage, the more this will “provide marketing for what we have to offer,” which, she says, will include what we have to offer in the fashion industry.
It is this vision, she says, that propels Junshazyna’s Academy of Designing & Technology to focus on identifying and bringing to the fore aspiring fashion designers whose talents can help illuminate the creative landscape whilst expanding the broader frontiers of the local fashion industry. Her chosen approach is to seek out creative local aspirants in the fashion sector to what Junshazyna’s Academy of Designing & Technology has to offer through its multi-faceted curriculum that seeks to refine creative ambitions into marketable talent as well as to help her charges to develop an entrepreneurial outlook without which, she says, their talents are probably likely “not to get them very far”.
As she sees it, the Academy is both about refining talents and about marketing creations in a manner that optimizes the chances that talent can be fashioned into entrepreneurial gain. Come Sunday, the three year-old Academy seeks to offer its students, what is referred to in the sector as their first significant ‘coming out’ forum, an opportunity to have their talents paraded and ‘spoken for.’ The Graduation ceremony which will be staged at the Theatre Guild, Junette says, seeks to attract both students of fashion and the potential investor to “see what we have to offer and maybe even join us in marketing the product.”
The event, which is being staged under the theme, “Empowering Women Through Skills & Technology” is an opportunity to engage both public and private sector institutions who shares her vision about a vibrant fashion industry, and to engage her about the possibility of collaborative pursuits. Above everything else, she told the Stabroek Business, she is hoping to receive endorsements and corresponding support from government for what she believes is an initiative “that can help to take us forward… there are likely to be several spinoffs from the country’s new business direction.”
How to utilize the opportunity afforded by the wide-open promotional for other sectors afforded by the oil and gas sector is one of Junette’s primary occupations. “I’d like to see the oil and gas people paying much more attention to other sectors,” she says. “That would make it meaningful for the country as a whole since the well-being of the people of Guyana will not rest with oil and gas alone.
There are other sectors that need support and attention,” she says. Junette told Stabroek Business that it would be “a good thing for the local fashion industry” if Sunday’s Graduation ceremony, Gala and Dinner at the Theatre Guild could attract an audience of sections of the corporate community that “are truly interested in the all-round development of Guyana.”
