IslandMix

The T3 Productions team (from left), Paulette Alfred, Coliss Jack and Jeniele McCarthy-Sinanan, with sketches of their Tribe individuals. Photo: Karla Ramoo

By Lisa Allen-Agostini

Sorry, Pearls is sold,” Coliss Jack told the person on the other side of the cell phone call. It was the second caller she had to break the news to during her hour-long interview at the Guardian. Jack, marketing manager for T3 Productions, was talking about Pearls and the eight other costumes — referred to as individuals — that her group has designed for mas band Tribe.

Unlike the regular section designs, which have been up for months, these designs have only recently been put up on the Tribe Web site, mobile.carnivaltribe.com. It was ironic that Pearls would be the first to sell. An individual featuring a sweeping bele skirt in billowing white silk, it was the one T3 was most worried about.

Of the six female individuals designed by T3’s Paulette Alfred, Pearls is the only one with a skirt. The others show masqueraders in two-piece or whole bathsuits. (The two male costumes are shown with briefs and a bodysuit.)

“We’re happy to know the costume that is the most covered is the one that sold first,” Alfred said, a sentiment echoed by the final member of the group, jewelry designer Jeniele McCarthy-Sinanan.

T3, which, they said, stands for Trinidad Three, is the working name under which they pitched the designs to Tribe last year. The designs blend the old and new, Alfred said.

“We really wanted to tie in traditional aspects of mas with elements of modernity.” And though the mas is all made from scratch, it doesn’t shy away from the “beads and feathers” paradigm it inherits from today’s bands.

Jack, a former events planner who now sells executive real estate professionally, keeps a close eye on the bottom line regarding the $9,000 to $12,000 costumes. She pitches them in a slick PowerPoint presentation to companies and private citizens. Pearls has been sponsored by a company; it’s unusual for an individual to be paid for out of pocket, she said.

Alfred and McCarthy keep tabs on the creative aspects. Alfred researched the theme, underwater life, to go with the band’s name, What Lies Beneath. She designed the silk costumes, each ten feet high by eight feet wide, along those lines and handed them over to McCarthy-Sinanan.

The jewelry is all going to be useful after Carnival Tuesday, they stressed. It is going to comprise a combination of calabash, found objects, wire, glass beads and more traditional Carnival decorations like piettes, which resemble big sequins.

Her last exhibition, Dragonfly, ran at High Square Art Gallery in Port-of-Spain at the end of November, showing her Boho-chic designs in semi-precious and precious materials. Both she and Alfred sported her earrings at the interview.

The T3 work is characteristic of her style: chokers, rows of beads and massive bracelets which adorn the bodies in the sketches. She described them as over-the-top, a cosquelle combination of fashion and mas. Calabash bangles embellished with gold leaves, and pearl bracelets that go from the wrist to elbow are two examples.

“We’re trying to sell a concept that after Carnival, you don’t have to throw it away,” Alfred said.

It’s artisan’s mas. Kendall DePeiza, a wirebender, is producing the headpieces; Pamela MacDonald, a seamstress, is making the costumes; and a fashion designer, who asked to remain anonymous for professional reasons, is hand-painting the silk panels which float above or around most of the costumes.

“We wanted to show that it came from somewhere more profound than China,” Alfred said with reference to the growing trend towards the importation of finished costumes.

Alfred, a flight attendant, has designed for the stage — she did last year’s An Evening of August and Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, both productions of the UWI Centre for the Festival and Creative Arts, where she was a student. She has also done children’s mas, designing for the St Dominic’s Children’s Home band.

“But this is on a totally different scale,” she admitted. “This is like learning everything over again.”

And one thing she and the rest of T3 have learned? Don’t underestimate the masquerader. Pearls’ popularity has proven that, in Alfred’s words, “People are ready for challenges in Carnival again. It just takes someone to do it.”

Thumbs up to them!
and Pearls being the first to go....goes to show....cloth mas still can reign....

Many of them have already been sold...


And actually Carnival Central's very own PartyC will be a DIVA in The Glistening!

fabulous....gotta get pics of that for sure

nice job

__________________
Recognize The ORIGIONAL,
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And from what I've already seen of the costume, I'm about ready to lose my mind!!!! Those ladies are really talented!!!!

The next 11 days cannot come soon enough!!!!!

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Well you WORK IT girl!!!!!
so yuh in it both monday & tuesday?

Jury still out on that. I have that option, and I'm seriously considering it. However, I want it to stand out on Carnival Tuesday, as opposed to the "I-see-that-same-thing-yesterday" syndrome we usually have after Carnival Monday.

Besides, the way I usually am on the road on both days, there is a small matter of wanting to actually have a full costume to wear on Tues.

eh heh....well then yuh know what to do

those costumes are beautiful!!!!