Towards A Jamaican Design Standard

Friends encouraged me to take them to JAMPRO, which I did. The pieces caused a bit of a furor because they were so unconventional, and JAMPRO happened to be working with Kingsley Cooper of Pulse, developing the first Caribbean Fashion Week. They told me I'd need a designer name, a logo and all the other things that come with a fashion label. I pulled it together, entered, and the next thing you know, I was a Jamaican designer on show.

But my interest in clothing was never about fashion in the conventional sense. My concern was that clothes should be versatile and convertible, a capsule wardrobe that could move from day into night, market into formal, with the wearer looking effortlessly put together. My approach was architectural, and it began with a simple question: What can I do with a square of fabric?

From it came garments that explore form, movement and transformation, pieces that adapt to the wearer, the occasion and the circumstances rather than requiring a different garment for every situation. Over time they became a family I call the Butterflies, and they remain a staple of the SIIM line. After 25 years, they are still evergreen.

What I've come to realise is that my interest was never in creating trendy or even fashionable pieces. My interest was in creating a standard.

Think of what Levi's established with blue jeans, or what Coco Chanel helped establish with the little black dress. There are millions of little black dresses in the world, all quite different, yet the idea of the dress as a wardrobe staple endures. The garment can be reinterpreted endlessly without losing its identity. That is what I wanted for the Butterflies.

I hoped the Butterfly series would become a recognisably Jamaican style, so that whenever you saw someone wearing one, you would say to yourself, "Aha! Jamaican!" As a kimono is Japanese and a cheongsam is Chinese, I wanted the Butterflies to be an emblem of Jamaican fashion. Not necessarily the only one, but one immediately recognisable as ours.

What makes them Jamaican? For me, it is their duality, the built-in contradictions they carry, their freedom of movement, their adaptability and their individuality. They are both revealing and covering, casual and formal, restrained and expressive. They let the wearer decide how much to reveal, how much to conceal, how to move and how to inhabit the garment. They suit different bodies, personalities and occasions; they are recognisably one family, yet no two are exactly alike.

There is something distinctly Jamaican about that. We are a people of contradictions. We adapt, we improvise, we reinvent. We are capable of tremendous formality and extraordinary informality, sometimes in the same breath. We have a strong sense of individuality, even as we share an unmistakable cultural identity.

Their Jamaican identity does not depend on national colours, traditional motifs, familiar prints or any of the other visual references we associate with Jamaican fashion. It is built into the way the garments work. Fundamentally, they constitute an original design language developed by a Jamaican, and I think that distinction matters.

If we are to develop a recognisable Jamaican design identity, we cannot limit ourselves to reproducing what we already recognise as Jamaican. We must also introduce new forms, new ideas and new standards that can become part of our cultural vocabulary. That is how traditions are established: someone creates something, others adopt and reinterpret it, and over time it becomes part of a shared identity. So I am not proposing a Jamaican uniform. I am proposing a recognisable Jamaican form, one that allows endless individual expression while retaining its own identity.

Which brings me to WIFAX. My exhibit is not a new collection, and it is not even a retrospective.

It is a statement that here is a piece of clothing that can come to symbolise a country and a culture.

The Butterflies were conceived with a particular design philosophy and still embody it. Their relevance does not depend on a season, a trend or a moment in fashion. What I am presenting is an idea about what Jamaican design can be, and how an original design can establish a place for itself in our cultural landscape.

I am not saying the Butterflies are, or should be, the only expression of Jamaican fashion. Nor can a designer simply declare something a national symbol and expect the country to accept it. Cultural recognition develops over time, through use, familiarity and the willingness of others to make something their own. But someone has to propose the idea in the first place.

And so, after 25 years, I am putting forward the Butterflies not simply as fashion, but as a contribution to the continuing development of a Jamaican design identity. I am saying that they are Jamaican, that they are uniquely so, and I am claiming them as my contribution to Jamaican culture — as a cultural artefact.