Edward SeagaJamaican music, generically referred to as reggae, is Jamaica's best-known brand name. It is recognisable worldwide reaching across age, gender and ethnic groups because of the universal popularity of music. Our music has been successfully branded over some three decades.
The Jamaica brand with respect to tourism is also well known globally, especially in travel circles. It carries a strong resort image.
Then there is the sports aspect of the brand, particularly track and field athletics. Jamaica's growing recognition as a track powerhouse, is establishing Jamaica as a brand name in athletics. Indeed, population-wise Jamaica is the strongest powerhouse of track in the world. The track world's darling for the moment is a Jamaican, Asafa Powell, the world's 100m record holder.
definitive brands
Apart from these definitive brands, there are a variety of Jamaican food and drink products which are popular internationally and well-positioned enough in the market place that they are being copied in other countries and fraudulently promoted as Jamaican in origin. This, of course, is because Jamaican sources and producers have not got their marketing, promotion and distribution together in properly supplying the market need. They have left strong Jamaican brand demands for rum, coffee, jerk, ackee, pimento and other
well-known Jamaican products, without adequate supplies.
A new brand product, which is now in the making, with good potential reach, is the fashion industry. This is, in large measure, due to the perseverance of a handful of believers who are now beginning to build dynamically on the foundation established over the years by a few pioneers. Kingsley Cooper now stands as the impresario who is setting the stage for the many creative
fashion houses and designers to draw international attention to Jamaican creations. There are many gifted fashion houses and designers with some having the potential to be internationally recognised in the ethnic markets such as: Fashion houses Cooyah, Catch a Fire (Cedella Marley), and Uzuri; and designers Biggy, Earl Turner and J. Edwards.
But fashion is not only about the design of garments and accessories. It is broader than that. Fashion wear has to be promoted by fashion models. Jamaican models have moved into the fashion industry with a bang on both the runway and in the photo studios. This is following on the singular success of Kimberly Mais-Issa, former Miss Jamaica Universe, who had a spectacular run as an international photo model, particularly in Japan, a few years ago. The Jamaican successes of more recent times are many:
n Supermodel Jaunel McKenzie is now ranked as the number one black model in the world, after only a brief history in the fashion world;
n Supermodel Nadine Willis is arguably Jamaica's top photographic model. She adorns not only top fashion magazine covers but also billboards in airports and elsewhere.
There are others climbing the ladders, notably Carla Campbell, Sunna Gottschalk, Rochelle Watson and top male model Oraine Barrett.
Couple the international recognition of Jamaican models with the up-and-coming awareness of Jamaican fashions and the result could be a new emerging Jamaican brand industry. Savvy promoter that he is, Kingsley Cooper has opened a big door for the promotion of fashion houses with fashion week presentations, more recently the big one, Caribbean Fashion Week.
Congratulations to those who believed in the creative talents of Jamaicans and who worked to create a new, emerging brand name for which Jamaica could become internationally recognised in the ethnic markets.
post-war freedom
Think of how fashion and music have flowed together over the years. The patterned two-step fox trot dance of the war years was replaced by the free-flowing abandonment of boogie and jive, rock and roll and the cooler tempo of rhythm and blues in the latter part of the 1950s. The
fashion trends followed suit. Girls celebrated the post-war freedom. Skirts were raised higher and higher until they could go no further. The mini skirt had arrived. Another display of the carefree, fast-changing times was exaggeration of the hip-line with crinoline skirts and then the
ultimate abandonment, no bras.
Fashions in Jamaica toned down in the 1960s, as did the music. The patterned steps returned to dance: the ska, rock steady and reggae. Then the 'Rude Boy' era of the late 1960s reflected the sobriety of the emergence of gun violence: darker colours, looser fits,
defiantly abandoning strictly conventional wear.
This trend moved further into 'conscious' times as Bob Marley's lyrics and the seductive reggae rhythms reinforced the appealing messages of the 1970s: the struggle against inequality and injustice, militant socialist solidarity and Pan Africanism. Rasta colours and creations, Castro fashions and
military-type fatigues were the prominent wear.
The 1980s was a period of restoration to the more conventional styles and trends. It was also, with the death of Bob Marley, the end of 'conscious' music. It took time for something new to emerge. Enter outlandish deejay and rap music led by the emphasis on sex by Yellow Man and macho Shabba Ranks. Enter multicoloured, oversized, rugged garments: Biggy's 'baggy wear'. Shabba's macho style matched up with oversized pants slipping down at the waist to expose underwear. Rags and towels were thrown over the shoulder. I was a musically hot, not a cool period.
But the next phase in music and fashion could be considered, not the outlandish deejay, but the outrageous dancehall. Where there was the baggy oversized cover-up, now there was the skimpy 'b ... rider' uncovering the body. Dancehall revelled in revealing, not concealing. It broke down the conventions of musical composition. 'Riddims' (rhythm) took prime of place; lyrics and melody were incidental, freeing up the structure of song to the driving rhythm, just as revealing outfits and gaudy colours freed up
emotional release. All this may
produce a terrible cacophony of music, but cubism and surrealism, in the beginning, lacked appreciation because they were an abandonment of the conventional world we see in art for the 'feel' of shapes, colours and wild imagination.
Nobody captured the combinations of fashion and dance more than 'Bogle', the dancehall maestro, who, until he was gunned down, was the master improviser in fashions and dance.
'Passa Passa'
and 'Bling Bling'
In truth, these styles of Jamaican fashion have been on show throughout the nineties of deejay and dancehall, but they were not the type of designs which were readily marketable in a literal sense on the runway in fashion shows. Yet they
contributed themes and motifs to add a touch of 'Passa Passa' and 'Bling Bling' to the commercial designs. In cities abroad with top fashion houses, representatives comb the streets to pick up ideas of what the street is wearing, for this is where much of the
fashion trends start. The Jamaican fashion industry would be wise to 'check out' the design ideas on the streets which flow from the most creative fountain of all, the bubbling juices of Jamaican youth as they compete to out-do each other in dress to attract recognition and respect. This is the source of the design trends which will create the unique Jamaican fashion brands.
Designs will flow from the traditional creativity of Jamai-cans in a country where the
people pride themselves for their awareness of what is fashionable and even the poor want only brand-name wear.
To foster this, I had an architectural model constructed of the Percy Junor Great House on Constant Spring Road with its nine acres of land, for the development of an elaborate fashion complex, making space available to designers and manufacturers of garments, accessories and
jewellery who would each have display space and windows in the front and workshops at the back. The entire complex would be devoted to all the players of the fashion industry: dress wear, casual wear, swimwear, footwear, neckwear, leatherwear, lingerie, craft and jewellery. It would employ some 1,500 workers.
special facility
The Great House would be a permanent centre for displays with a special facility for staging regular shows for buyers, local and overseas. This grand design never happened. The General Election of 1989 resulted in a change of government. The new government tore down the Great House to build high-rise apartments.
The idea of a centralised
fashion complex still stands as a creative and production centre to properly launch a budding industry with much potential. It would create a continuous
ferment of fashion ideas among the mix of players, throwing up streams of design concepts. This was the same design concept behind the Jamaica School of Art (now Edna Manley School of Visual and Performing Arts) when it was planned by me at the end of the 1960s as a single location for training in all the arts painting, sculpture, drama, music each benefiting from the mix with others.
This mix and blend is what
cultural creativity and expression is all about, the inter-mingling of reasoned ideas and intuitive feelings. Mahatma Gandhi
elaborated on this when he said, "Open the windows of the
country and let the breeze of all cultures blow about our face."
Edward Seaga is a former prime minister. He is now a Distinguished Fellow at the University of the West Indies. E-mail: veritasja@lycos.com
