UTT design graduate Lynda Osborne models a formal design from her thesis collection. Photo: Brian Ng Fatt
Lynda Osborne walks into the T&T Guardian building on St Vincent Street, Port-of-Spain, garment bag in hand, wearing an adorable, pale yellow, knee-length dress, with the hem shredded—her own design. She sits in a calm, self-assured manner and waits for the interview to begin. “I brought a bio.” she says, handing me a sheet of paper. She is not new to the world of fashion design and has more than two decades of experience in garment construction. She is also one of the first graduates of the Bachelor of Arts in Fashion and Design programme from the Caribbean Academy of Fashion Design at the University of Trinidad and Tobago. “I used to work as an accounts clerk, years ago at a Government Ministry. I would make all of my own clothes and my co-workers would always admire the designs and some of them offered to buy my clothes,” says Osborne. She recalls starting by making only a few items for friends and co-workers. She smiles.
“There was a demand, a great demand and so I quit my job and opened a boutique.” Her smile dims as she reveals that she was forced to close her boutique a few years later. “When the ban on imported goods was lifted it made it hard on local producers,” she explains. She says for years she had to sideline her love of fashion and concentrate on the wholesale market, mostly corporate wear. “Sometimes I would design several looks for company uniforms and occasionally I would do something different with a jacket or a sleeve but buyers would always choose the simple, common looks,” she said. The fashion academy provided a return of her excitement for fashion for Osborne. She describes the fashion academy as a great opportunity for designers. “One can be successful to a point when operating in one’s own creative sphere, but its better when you know how the system operates, who and what you are competing with, and more so , your full potential capacity. The fashion academy opened my eyes to that,” she says.
She hopes the academy will also open the country’s eyes to see that T&T could offer a lot of design talent. “It is an opportunity to get people’s faith back in local designers,” she says. “The academy gave me hope that I could do fashion and that it could make money,” she says. Osborne recognises that operating in today’s world requires a lot more from a designer in terms of selling their product. “Online businesses are where consumers go now so I am developing a Web site to put my designs online,” she said. She explains that 37 designers graduated from the fashion and design programme last month and says all 37 designers were unique. “We can’t really compete with each other because our ideas, our designs are really very different. I do believe, however, that if we work together we will get further.
“For a young designer to open a boutique now rentals and location are a hindrance and if you don’t operate in the proper location you don’t get respect,” she said. She adds that if designers were to work together or get assistance it would go a long way toward establishing a fashion district in the country. “Nobody can do it on their own. Their are a lot of good designers that don’t have the resources and there is a big market in this country. People are always buying clothes, why not from local designers?” she queries.
Even as she acknowledges the difficulties inherent in going it alone, she has already planned her way forward. With a Web site in the works and ideas for designs being conceptualised, Osborne is promising that T&T fashion market will be seeing a lot more from her.
