NARIS­SA FRAS­ER

The East Gates Mall atri­um will be trans­formed in­to a run­way on No­vem­ber 14 for lo­cal fash­ion en­tre­pre­neur Yosi­a­ha Fletch­er’s up­com­ing fash­ion show. Ti­tled The 212 Run­way, it promis­es to cel­e­brate “all bod­ies” and “all beau­ty.”

With live mu­si­cal per­for­mances, the show will show­case in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty and the “next gen­er­a­tion of lo­cal tal­ent.” It will fea­ture fash­ion from 212 Lo­ca­tion, which of­fers men’s and women’s cloth­ing, footwear and ac­ces­sories; MYNT, which brings to­geth­er ac­ces­sories, gifts and beau­ty prod­ucts; and Stu­dio 212, which spe­cialis­es in el­e­vat­ed women’s wear.

In to­tal, there will be five run­way seg­ments with a di­verse group of se­lect­ed mod­els.

Fletch­er, CEO of 212 Lo­ca­tion, said the show’s cast­ing call in Sep­tem­ber saw over 400 mod­els walk the run­way, spark­ing con­ver­sa­tions about di­ver­si­ty and rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the in­dus­try. This, he said, re­in­forced his be­lief that fash­ion has room for more in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty, ex­per­i­men­ta­tion and self-ex­pres­sion, and he be­lieves the show will build on that en­thu­si­asm.

“The fash­ion in­dus­try can some­times be­come too com­fort­able with what is fa­mil­iar, and I think there is room for us to be more ad­ven­tur­ous, more ex­pres­sive and more will­ing to try some­thing dif­fer­ent,” he ex­plained.

“Fash­ion should be fun. It should make you feel some­thing, and it should give you the free­dom to ex­press who you are with­out feel­ing that you have to fit in­to a par­tic­u­lar mould.”

Fletch­er said The 212 Run­way is more than just a show­case for lo­cal brands, but will al­so serve as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to move be­yond fa­mil­iar fash­ion choic­es. He added that it will al­so en­cour­age peo­ple to ex­plore how cloth­ing can com­mu­ni­cate a mood, tell a sto­ry or re­veal a dif­fer­ent side of their per­son­al­i­ties.

“It is an in­vi­ta­tion to re­think who gets to par­tic­i­pate in fash­ion, to cel­e­brate per­son­al style and to give emerg­ing tal­ent a place to be seen. At its heart is a de­sire to open up the run­way to more peo­ple, chal­lenge con­ven­tion­al beau­ty stan­dards and cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for as­pir­ing mod­els and cre­atives who may not see them­selves rep­re­sent­ed in tra­di­tion­al fash­ion spaces.”

As his 212 Out­let brand con­tin­ues to fo­cus on af­ford­able fash­ion, he said the show will al­so con­nect the busi­ness with the wider com­mu­ni­ty, demon­strat­ing the role lo­cal re­tail­ers can play in sup­port­ing the coun­try’s cre­ative econ­o­my.

The or­gan­is­ers want the run­way to re­flect T&T’s di­ver­si­ty, cre­at­ing a space for peo­ple of dif­fer­ent heights, body types, back­grounds and ap­pear­ances to par­tic­i­pate.