From Project Runway to Scaling a Luxury Brand from the Caribbean: Anya Ayoung-Chee’s Next Chapter

Anya Ayoung-Chee joins The Corie Sheppard Podcast for one of her most open and reflective conversations yet. From winning Project Runway with almost no formal sewing experience to navigating public scandal, entrepreneurship, motherhood, AI, Caribbean identity, and rebuilding her fashion brand — this episode explores the mindset behind one of Trinidad & Tobago’s most recognizable creative entrepreneurs.

Anya speaks candidly about grief after losing her brother Pilar, the turning points that shaped her life, and how those experiences pushed her toward fashion and entrepreneurship. She also breaks down the realities of the fashion industry, the future of AI in creativity, Caribbean identity in design, and why she believes Caribbean creators can lead globally instead of following trends.

The conversation also dives into:

• Winning Project Runway against experienced designers
• The pressure and editing behind reality TV
• Caribbean fashion identity and post-colonial culture
• AI, vibe coding, and the future of creative business
• Entrepreneurship, impact, and building sustainable businesses
• Navigating public scrutiny and personal growth
• Music, Xigon, sound clash culture, and creativity
• Motherhood, reinvention, and purpose

A powerful conversation about resilience, audacity, creativity, and evolving into your next chapter.

#coriesheppardpodcast #AnyaAyoungChee #ProjectRunway #Fashion #AI #CaribbeanCulture #Entrepreneurship

Transcript

Teaser And Welcome

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Michael Kors, who was one of the judges, he said, Ania, just stick to what you're good at. Diana Furstenberg has built an empire with one style. I consider pilar dying as one major turning point in my life, and I consider the sex tapes another major one. We have a copy-paste culture when it comes to many things. This post-colonial way of dressing our policemen or special forces in woolen suits makes absolutely no logical sense. I evolved, really, out of Project Runway because I couldn't sow it. I spent a year after the tapes were leaked in pure state of anger. You know there's such a thing called misogyny.

Corie 0:39

You are now applying the first and Cory Chapel. Mommy, look at my true. Don't let this talk. It's gonna be sexy. Welcome to the Cory Chapel Podcast. My name is Cory Chapel. Welcome back to everybody who's been listening. Thank you for all the new people who have been tuning in. Remember that there's a listening experience, right? Not just YouTube. You can listen to the interviews. Don't always come and watch all our mistakes live. Like today. When David and them line up people who are in fashion, for me, who's wearing the same thing every day to come and talk to. Yes, Anya. Welcome to the show. Anya young chu. How are you going?

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Thank you so much for having me. I'm good. Thank you.

Corie 1:23

It's a pleasure to have you here. We've

Fitness And The Male Gaze

Corie 1:25

been looking forward to having you here for a long time.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

I've been looking forward to being here. Really? Honored to be invited.

Corie 1:29

Oh my god, things bad. Things bad. I have to start with most important things first.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Please do.

Corie 1:36

And you're fitting over these years. I watching your little fitness and thing. You're exercising a lot. It's critical because we're not fit. David and I trying to start our fitness journey. So anybody here who fits, we want to know how. I see it's a bit.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

So I don't know what to tell you about that much.

Corie 1:55

So what's the gym?

SPEAKER_00 1:56

It's J Camp Fitness. Right. Um, uh, who's become a very good friend of mine, uh, trainer is Jana Camacho, and it's really incredible, to be honest. Beyond the fitness, the community. I know it sounds happened, but it is, it's it feels like a family, you know. It's just really wonderful.

Corie 2:12

Yeah, so what you always do in all women's gym that you always get so for the men is be distracting you all from gyms otherwise, or what's happening?

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Oh my god, really? So I think at the at the top of the list, um, you know, there's such a thing called misogyny. Right, is there? And there's such a thing as the male gaze, and um my whole feminist side is gonna come out from the beginning. And the truth is, yeah, you're in an environment where you're in tight clothing, you're sweating, you're trying to, you know, um be focused on your actual purpose of being there, and it becomes the dynamic of male-female. And obviously, this is assuming a more majority heterosexual um true dynamic. But yeah, just my experience anyway, and many of us is that in an all-female setting, it's just a level of safety, you know, and then that way you're not concerned even by this unconscious or subconscious buzz of the male gaze. So you just focus on what you're there for, you know. Okay, good, good, good. And I think that is evident. I mean, you see all of her clients, like she's she's an incredible trainer.

Corie 3:13

Yeah, something I've managed you all there, all this McQueen Instagram, and I see you all have both just the fitness, you all have a nice vibe. So I just want to know about it. So, David, we'll get all male gym, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:22

So I so I don't think it's gonna work quite as well.

Corie 3:25

I don't think so. To be honest, ways we up to these days, Anya.

Relaunching Anya Ayongshi Resort

Corie 3:30

What are you working on? What's keeping you busy?

SPEAKER_00 3:32

Besides the fitness journey, um, I have just relaunched my clothing line, Anya Ayongshi Resort. It's been 12 years since I've had a formal collection. I didn't completely stop, but I didn't put out a collection um in the entire period that I was working on social innovation and various different other small businesses, generally in the creative industries. But this is a return to what I know to do best and what I'm best known for. And what I love to do, to be honest. I think that's been the major shift into re um connecting with what is my passion and what I see as a potential next step in my own creative refinement, you know. Um, in designing for the line in the past, I was simultaneously, you know, doing brand endorsements and appearances. After I won Project Runway, so much of my professional life was taken up by having come off of a big TV show and less about being a formal fashion designer in the formal industry. And um, and a lot has changed too in the industry since then as a result of technology, e-commerce, you know, now AI. There are lots of ways to uh build a fashion business outside of the pre-existing system, um, which you know is was very hierarchical and still is to some degree, but we have a lot more autonomy about how we communicate with our customer base, how we sell to our customer base, how we interact with them um commercially and otherwise. And so I've really enjoyed um coming back into it with all of that freedom. And I think with a bit more maturity around the business of it, you know, who am I targeting? How are we making this build and scale to a successful business besides the optics of a successful business?

Corie 5:11

Which could be frustrating, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Yeah, I mean, I've had quite a bit of that, you know, but that optics don't pay the bills.

Corie 5:17

No, no, no, no, no. It's a funny thing, right? Like when the thing

Resort Wear Strategy And Kors Advice

Corie 5:20

seems to be doing real good and everybody's seeing you out there, but you face them bills, you face them overheads all the time.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

Absolutely.

Corie 5:26

I always wondered like resort. How come and yeah, resort? Was it was the idea behind that?

SPEAKER_00 5:31

So it's evolved. It was my first collection ever, my first line was back in 2009, and that wasn't Resort Wear. That was inspired by my brother who died the year before, two years before, and it was much more ready to wear separate. It was inspired actually by that first collection by the Rasa Farai and Boba Shanti, and it was a more conceptual approach to designing. And I evolved really out of Project Runway because I couldn't sew, if you remember that story. And my my only real technical skill set was to sew in straight lines. Um, I was very good intuitively at draping, which is the process of creating a garment on a dress form as opposed to. Um which is ironic because I, you know, have to learn all this by myself.

Corie 6:24

Well, who better to teach?

SPEAKER_00 6:26

Yes, I think so. And so anyway, the point is a lot of what I came to be known for were these flowy garments that were, you know, very easy silhouettes and it didn't take, they weren't very structured, in other words. And that tends to lend itself to the type of clothing that you wear when you travel, um, when you go to warm parts of the world. And then, of course, I'm from a very warm part of the world. So I always struggled with how to design for an experience, a lifestyle that wasn't my regular lifestyle. And Michael Kors, who was one of the judges for my season, I met with him afterwards and he said, Anya, just stick to what you're good at. Design five SKUs, and you know, skew is a unit of um of commodity. And we and he just was like, just simplify your offering. Uh Dian von Furstenberg is a very famous designer who's you know famous for this rap dress from the 70s, and he just kept saying to me, Diane von Furstenberg has built an empire with one style. You know, eventually, as your business grows, you can add more skews, you can enter into different temperature temperatures at different types of clothing and garments, but just start with where you know you have um strength and keep it simple. And so I think resortware is where that aligns for me. I understand warm climates, I understand travel, I understand aspirational travel. Um, so much of the Caribbean brand from the outside in is this idea of you know warm luxury, luxury in parts of the world that people aspire to live, and and that's our life. So it really was from a both a natural, innate design sensibility standpoint, and then a business strategy standpoint, where do those things collide? And so hence makes sense, makes sense.

Corie 8:05

Understand that um the business side of

Rethinking Caribbean Dress Codes

Corie 8:07

it as well. But it's something I always wonder about when you see how we dress as Caribbean people, because we have a colourful past, right? All of us from the Caribbean. And sometimes we take those influences and we apply almost as if that's just what we see and what we know, and we just we just follow it. So even what we call business will, or you know, I wonder if we need to dress in suits to be able to go to meetings or into parliaments and places like that. You envision a world where we could just do resort to you, right? I want to get to that point, yeah, but at least a little more relaxed in terms of the.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

So we've gone from feminism now to another very, very um You see, it's a highly heavy topics and all. No, no, no, no. Actually, what I'm saying is you you're touching on something that I harp on probably too much that we have uh a copy-paste culture when it comes to many things, um, from all forms of ideas to fashion, as you mentioned. And this post-colonial way of dressing, like, you know, our policemen, our special forces in woolen suits makes absolutely no logical sense. And that has to be some sort of unwillingness to let go of a past that you we have to say collectively um hold on to as a standard of uh success or a standard of of propriety, of appropriateness, right? But sortorially, you know, we don't pay attention to what our actual needs are. We live in a warm place that's getting warmer and warmer. You need breathable fabrics, you need loose-fitting um silhouettes, you need you can find ways to be formal without it being borrowed from a culture that doesn't, that's not ours. So I agree with you entirely. I mean, there's always a place for a suit, there's always a place for um, you know, more formal dressing, depending on on the out on the on the or the intention. But everyday professional wear does not have to be where you're sweltering.

Corie 9:56

Like, it does not make sense.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

And to me, it's a reflection of a lack of confidence in our own identity. And I think there's a consistent like question around what does Cribean fashion really mean? What is what do we have an aesthetic? Um, and that's difficult to accomplish when particularly from Trinidad, but if you add the entire um melting pot of cultures that have made up who we are, it's difficult in a short lifespan of our countries to identify one aesthetic, right? Of course. But certainly we could get to a point where there are sartorial choices that reflect our lifestyle, that reflect our you know, the way in which we move through the world on a daily basis. And you cannot tell me that you know living in layers of suits it makes any sense when you live in the tropics. Of course, of course.

Corie 10:45

I see almost make it a point to do it. Even if by example, if I'm a senior talking about Delodacy, Antonia Fifi, for instance, making it a point to say that although she knows maybe in a colder climate most of the time.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Yeah.

Corie 10:56

And yet I understand that most of my fashion scents come from Devil's Web, you know, Devil West Prado.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

It's my favourite movie.

Corie 11:01

Yeah, that's all I watch, right? That's my whole idea of the fashion.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

You're starting in the right place.

Corie 11:06

But I do remember her saying at the time that um she was somewhat suruleon. Since it's like the movie, remember she was somewhat. I just think to me, right? Right. Yeah, Cerulean. I know what these things mean is blue. But I remember her saying how calculated it is. The industry starts from way before and the plan for us, where ahead,

Building A Global Caribbean Fashion Voice

Corie 11:23

and so on. You feel like our industry could drive us in that direction where we start finding our sense of maybe show the world what Caribbean fashion is or what Caribbean formal or isoto is?

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Well, so what you're referencing is the stages of ideation that begin, at least traditionally in the fashion world, from the couture shows, which are sort of high fashion, and there are only a handful of houses that can maintain that level of creative output, right? Because it's extremely expensive, it's very time-consuming, and it requires a tremendous amount of input, you know, right? Um, but there are still a handful of those houses that do that, and then there's a sort of trickle-down effect all the way down to your point in Devil Bear's Product, so the department store salesman, right? Her point was that there's a relationship. You can't just assume that because you don't care about fashion, that you haven't been influenced in some way by the trends that begin in a room in Paris or wherever, you know, two years before, right? The same could be said for business ideas, the same could be said for technology, right? There's always some inception.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

Of course.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

How does the Caribbean do that? And should we, you know, um, should should we be consistently on the last mile of a creative industry? Or should we, as we have before, like I think Bob Marley's probably a great example, at the cutting edge, right? Should we embrace the fact that we have a unique perspective on what fashion output could be, particularly to your point, in warm weather climates? Um, you look at a brand like The Cloth, um, which is designed by Robert Young, and he's just been through an incredible um journey with his brand, and they're now in Harrods, and it's a distinctively Caribbean and Afro-Caribbean, but very Caribbean voice. And that has to do with textile techniques, um, references to many different aspects of who we are as a people culturally. And we have a very singular story, right? And that's a singular story that's consistently evolving. Perhaps is that something that not necessarily in the same hierarchical downstream effects of the European approach to fashion, but I I do think that you're touching on something that we have the potential to lead, right? To lead what warm weather climate dressing looks like. And to the end of really saying that, you know, there's a market there for that. And there's a whole global south that is warm for half the year. Yeah, of course. Um, it's not just the Caribbean. So I think that there's something there to unpack, but a lot of that rests on collective system, systematic approach.

SPEAKER_02 13:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

And um we have not yet established what that looks like. There's a lot of independent success or independent approaches, which happens in almost every sphere of the creative industries.

Corie 14:03

Yeah, all.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

All, all, right?

Corie 14:05

Um and sports and all, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:08

We're individual brilliance, but battling with that. How do we operate systematically towards an end goal that we all agree upon and work towards in our various different contributions and and yeah, you know, that it's it's a it's a theoretically a great idea. Um, and maybe as we evolve further, we'll get there. But for the time being, I do value seeing the brands that hold on to there's a there's a designer named Rachel Scott who just became the creative director of Prenzula, which is a New York brand, and um, she's Jamaican, and she has maintained her own voice of their own line, and as well as interpreting her voice through this um more international brand. I mean, her brand's become international now too, but the point is there are examples of designers who have found a way to lead with our perspective on a global stage. And I do think that that is my my intent with my line. Um, working towards uh export to the European market as a primary focus for now. Eventually, ideally the Middle East parts of Africa, I really would like to see the brand scale. And that takes having a unique perspective, you know, and and making sure that it also meets the needs of the clientele that you're serving.

Corie 15:16

It makes perfect sense, even when you talk about that, because like when you say resort, where my last um on my last trip to resort gave me in some trouble, right, David? That's why we know. But I went to Jamaica last year and I observed maybe something we always see, and I may mightn't pay a lot of attention to it. It's like, and and I might do it when I travel as well. If I go to New York or Miami, I want that, I want to be a New Yorker for that time, right? And you see Europeans come to Jamaica, they wear the raster, you know the thing, right? They put on that and they put on one wrap and they they wear Bob Marley just like their hair and they put some beads. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And and that works, and it's it's some of it is a little cliche. But I asked, I asked really because I feel like there's a real opportunity in those in those spaces to do that. And you've you've done some of that because if I if I you're a big man watching Project Run, yeah. I just want to put that out there. Every week and lifetime, big heartback man, so they all lay it on their wives, and I'm like, yeah. No, it's you, it's you. We have you have the issue here now. But I mean you went into a space where is is is globally recognized, people come in at different perspectives from everywhere, and you beat everybody bad as trainings tend to do, you know. It just licks like that. But in some recent articles, I saw you as we're talking about that leading edge technology as well, talking about AI in fashion.

AI Workflows And Vibe Coding

Corie 16:25

Yeah. You want to talk about that? Because I don't understand. For me, I want to design something in AI, I mean I don't want to do no design at all. That is what it means for me. Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Well, I've applied AI across all of my workflows, not just my creative process, but including my creative process. I have a small team, we work very in an agile way, and it has given us ways to perform as though we're a much more robust team and at a global level, from strategy to you know, general operations to um, you know, basic legal, not anything that we shouldn't be doing ourselves. Um, but for small businesses, you know, these types of operational efficiencies are huge in terms of bridging the gap, right? And uh we also work very fast, so we need to have ways in which we can do that effectively and stay at a certain like output standard. And so all the various LLMs like ChatGBT, perplexity cloud, all of that I use for operational um efficiency. But then I've also been vibe coding, which is you know using AI to create software um which looks like apps, websites, actual tools, and I love it. To the point that I've started a series, we just did Barbidas recently, we did Trinidad First, where I teach, or teach is the wrong word. I I come like bring community of women together and show them what I know. Um, and help them know that this is a tool, this is a type of AI application that can be applied for both personal life as well as business, and particularly for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs. Um just it's just so amazing to be able to build something that otherwise you would have had to find a dev team, pay a set of money, make tons of mistakes, fail, go again, and then give up, you know. Um, no, not really. But the point is now you can iterate, iterate, you can come up with like I built an app on four different vibe coding platforms, eventually pass it off to the developer's team for spool, which is my other business. And um I could never have done that before. You know, I use it to solve for it's use it to do with my kids. Like ever get frustrated with the administrative platform of my child, my son's school, and I build one, right? Like, because you know, this we live in a place where like quick creative solving problem is not normally our strength, right? Um, so now I've adopted that into my life. Um, and then I've used it to like if you go to my website, you'll notice that 50% of the imagery is AI generated. That came out of uh doing a photo shoot that I made certain mistakes about and the outcome was not what I wanted, and I I couldn't spend the money all over again. So I sat down over like a weekend and I just figured it out. I just kept iterating, iterating until I got to an end product that was like, wow, this is like global standard photography, videography. You know.

Corie 19:12

So when you say AI generated, the whole thing, the model, everything. Oh my god. The next 50% is from district. Yeah, I just want to tell everybody that there's where the other photos come from.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Because, you know, we are district fans.

Corie 19:23

Evidently, all of us, yeah. All of us, yeah. Um, but you know, I see the discussion going on in music now where people it did like like technology is a funny thing. Like sometimes people, and and with AI now, maybe we see in the way people felt when Color TV came in. I don't know if you're living in that era where people just saying don't use it at all. But I've seen people do music with AI, and there's a huge uproar by quote unquote real musicians who produce songs or play instruments and actually sing versus the people who on either side. So your your advice is from an entrepreneurial standpoint, embrace it?

SPEAKER_00 19:59

There's an inevitability about it, right? Like I just for some reason re-watching down to Napi, which probably is a look into my life. Um and they they're at a scene, they're you know, resisting, resisting, resisting the wireless, which is obviously the radio, right? And the only reason they eventually bring it into the house was because the king was speaking, right? And then they realize, oh, it's can be used for this, it could be used for that. And there's just an inevitability for certain technologies. There's a tipping point where it's either you're gonna resist to your own detriment or you embrace to the your own benefit, right? And I think particularly as creative people, we have a we have an intuitive way of applying technologies that people who are not necessarily that um imaginative may not realize that it can work in your favor because at the end of the day, there's certain administrative things and operational things like I don't want to ever do. Ever for sure, you know. Um, so that for sure. But even when it comes to creative process perspective, the relationship and the co-creation with the tools still requires a human perspective, right? Like you, you your individual and singular mind around what you're trying to create. The AI can't, at least yet. Yeah, at least yes, you know, it may eventually. But I think Rick Rubin to me is the best uh sort of voice on this, right? Like his take is AI and vibe coding in particular, but AI in general, like he describes AI as um vibe coding as punk rock, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

The punk rock of of tech of AI. And in the sense that before punk rock, you know, having a formal musical background required was required, and you have to know all the you know all the theory and like you know, to get from an idea to execution, you had to really go through this entire like traditional process. Punk rock gave people license to just make, yeah, just create just make. And like that's kind of what at least vibe coding for me is. It doesn't mean I still handed off the project to real developers, you know. And that co-creative process with both the AI and them is what I think is producing a better product faster and more effectively. I don't think it should be considered a complete replacement, especially for creative outputs. But I think learning it, then it becomes a tool. What if you can use it like Rick Rubin is to then create something masterful and never seen before? Of course.

Corie 22:22

And when people like him say that, you gotta pay attention. Absolutely. Because they were intruder riggers. He comes from the old music industry.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

I mean, I saw a piece that's in a museum in Tokyo where this couple artists you created an art installation where these bubbles basically fill a space and they last as long as they possibly can until they fall, right? And just visually and and and it's stunning, right? But the AI is clawed in the background predicting all of the science, right? So the point is like, how do you embrace it to the point where it emphas it it exponentially improves your outputs? It doesn't replace your unique ideation process and it doesn't replace our particular singular voice on what particular area of creativity you're in. But being afraid of it is only, in my opinion, going to slow you down and keep you at the back of course of the line when it comes to like what we could be participating in. As to me, this is the first technology where in this part of the world we could be in the frontline conversation if we would just embrace it.

Corie 23:23

Yeah, and it's something interesting you said that because like for me as well, like the administrative, and I was just in a meeting before this tell and I realized like, listen, I need somebody who booked, we've master booked the wrong time and the wrong well, me. Not too much David, David organized. But it's like from the creative side, I may be just curious and fast. So asking people questions is uh comfortable for me while admin is not. Right. But there might be people who are administratively strong and they could use the AI to help with the creative side if that might be the case. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:51

Yeah, and I mean, even if you think like when I talk about that photo shoot situation, and I feel a little bit well, particularly all these smaller creative companies feel that this is a replacement of them. But in fact, let's just take that exact example. If small photography studios had someone in their team who was able to convert the imagery immediately to these AI generated, because I still had to go off of a real image, right? For sure, now you don't have to. But the point is you will be turning over content like rapidly, high quality, good quality, like you will increase your capacity to take on jobs and output jobs. Like you can't even imagine, and that's a business model, right?

Corie 24:34

It is.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Why not lean into that?

Corie 24:36

Well, sadly, if you learn like Blockbuster and Netflix, the companies who in that business, it it may not be photographers.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

They can't see it.

Corie 24:44

Who do that sometimes, sometimes, sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

Look one there, look one here.

Corie 24:47

You know what I mean? It may not be photographers. But it's it's true. But I mean, and and I think we live in a time where it's just changing so fast, you know.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

So to keep up with it is is Yeah, and you have to find where I mean it's it's probably the glass half full, half empty distinction, right? Like, I can't help but find the opportunity. And that's probably why I love new technology. And I love, I've always have. In the in the period of COVID, I was I did a deep dive into Web3. You know, I was selling and creating NFTs and figuring out how you did. Yes. Don't judge me. Um, but I was obsessed at that time with blockchain and decentralized technology and understanding what that could mean for typically disenfranchised communities around the world, you know, like if it worked the way it's designed to work.

Corie 25:36

Yeah, it should have been. Um, but then you have, you know, humans. Yeah, of course, of course, of course. But I didn't change it. Yeah. So before I get into some of that, because your entrepreneurial mind is somewhat very curious about spool.

Spool And Bespoke Fashion At Scale

Corie 25:46

What is it? What is it?

SPEAKER_00 25:47

Spool. Spool is now a matchmaking platform that matches makers of apparel and accessories directly to clients to create bespoke garments, so one-off garments, you need something for a special occasion, a wedding dress, a bathing suit for a particular trip, etc. We do alterations, so adjustments to clothing, and then we do small batch manufacturing. So for designers like me who need, you know, small minimums, but uh access to makers who can produce in a way that is suits their outputs. Um, so it's basically Fiverr, if you ever use Fiverr.

Corie 26:20

Got it, got it, got it.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

For fashion.

Corie 26:22

It makes sense. You're a teacher for real, no one understand. You're no longer trying to figure out what is it.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

I know, I know. Well, to be fair, it hasn't launched as that yet. Yeah, but that's what you asked because you were talking about it. All right, good. Um but um it has been evolving over the years. It began as a training program. We taught uh 94 women from address backgrounds, both Venezuelan and Trinidad, Trinidadian, through uh the support of the IDB. And when we graduated that uh that bevy of women, then we took on about 24 of them on contract work and we became a manufacturing facility. And we did that for the last two years or so, and in the period of becoming a facility, the realization of the original idea. I came up with this in 2016. I was at an innovation um program in Amsterdam at the time, and it really was like putting together the ideas of having not had a formal background in production and relying tremendously on my maker community to produce my line, loving technology, loving always to create opportunities for communities and figuring out how all these things got came together. And then having a genuine belief that if people had the opportunity to have one-off items made for them easily on the regular, like how we grew up with a grandma or auntie, or somebody who could sew, would make your uniforms, it would make your graduation dress, it would make your you know, your suit for your whatever. Um, I wanted to bring that to life from a on a in a scalable way. When I went to Miss University, it was in Vietnam after the competition. Um, you know, we stayed in Vietnam for a few weeks, and one of the places we frequented was a small town called Hoyan, which was very well maintained despite the war and stunning little um French Vietnamese village. And in there they had all these tailor shops, which they have, of course, in many parts of the world, where you go in, you sort of choose your fabric, you choose your design, they measure you, and then you come back the next day and it's made, right? And I was my mind was blown by this, you know. So that was you know, 2008, and ever since then, I had always had this idea that you could create that mechanism, but at scale.

Corie 28:32

Oh god, got it, got it. I've experienced like that too, you know, off Oxford Street in London. Right. They had a place you could go and get measured for suits and stuff. But when we went back the next day, already the whole place was gone. Stop the whole place where we went and everybody was measuring. It is they have no business there again. Papered up and everything. It's music. We're trying to organize one of them for the podcast now.

SPEAKER_02 28:54

Stop.

Corie 28:55

Yeah, the men scamming like hell, just collect everybody deposits and they go on.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

That's crazy. Okay, well, that's not the version we want. No, we don't need to do any good one. Part of the reason is that we want to be able to protect both ends, both end users, you know, one from never getting paid. Of course. And one from never receiving their super. Yeah, of course, of course, of course.

Corie 29:13

When you're bringing strangers together, those things matter a lot. Yeah, there's a designer phone online uh maybe about five, six years ago, just before COVID. Name of the company is Sire Collectives, somewhere in America, SIA.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Okay, I never heard of it.

Corie 29:26

But military guy, but he has a good eye for design and I guess industrial design. He's designed sneakers.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

Right.

Corie 29:32

And it's real hard to get. He launches maybe one a week.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Wow. And um as in one unit? No, no, just one design. Okay.

Corie 29:40

Well, you may have one design, but he has a bunch of skills, so you might get one color. If you want a black, you had to wait until he put it out and hope for the best. Yeah, set your alarms and stuff. I wonder how now, we're direct-to-consumer, how important that is for you in your world now that you could just Instagram

How Social Media Broke The Old Model

Corie 29:55

just sell to we audiences. In terms of the scarcity model being more accessible now, I don't know if it's scarcity or if it's just production issues because he's pretty open and he talks a lot about going to China or going to Vietnam and dealing with manufacturers. So he doesn't treat it as if it's scarcity. Right. He just does small orders all over the amongst so that he's not stocking a whole lot of stuff on stone. And I guess shorter runs. Right. And when sold out, it's sold out. eBay is your best bet after that. But he designs nice and uh maybe, you know, I suppose if you only do 10, it could seem like real high demand. But I don't get an impression, you know. It looked like he's doing some numbers, but he going there.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

So what's the question?

Corie 30:34

Is it that and remember that time where fashion and it comes from Kanye West talking about going into fashion where it's very, very a controlled industry.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

Right.

Corie 30:43

Like to either get access to manufacturing or access to distribution and retail is hard.

SPEAKER_00 30:47

Right.

Corie 30:47

But no, we know we'll where maybe you could talk to consumers. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

I think even from the time I won Project Ramade, now the I mean, not saying it's easy, but compared to what it was, and and also there are factories in the world now that will produce at much lower minimums upfront. Um, and then like we said, you know, like selling your clothes no longer means having to be in a department store. That used to be one of the only ways. You also would only have a get into the department store if you were recognized in some way or another through the media. The only media in a sort of um North American, European perspective, which is why the Devil Wears Prada even is a show, was Vogue, right? Which is was determined by one woman, which was Anna Winter. Like literally, you're talking about one woman's opinion that then filtered down to the buyers, to then even the clientele. I mean, all of this like the window of opportunity was very small. And I'm talking about Eurocentric, North American-centric. I can't speak for Asia, but that was the world I grew up in, you know, where the runway also was like happened in February for the collection that, and then still that way that that would be released in September. So the buying periods were were all long.

Corie 31:56

Right.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

Um, so for a small independent brand to fit into that machine, you know, to find the upfront capsule to afford the minimums to then enter and then hope that you sell. It was basically impossible for most of it, the vast majority of players to succeed in that model. What has completely changed is well, the media is now the social media.

SPEAKER_02 32:17

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

The decide decision making still more or less um it has an editorial aspect from you know all the magazines and online magazines that determine what is trending. Um, but there's a lot more crowd-sourced feedback, right? Like, does this individual person in their home with a credit card like your dress, then they're gonna buy it? They don't need to go through this little rigmarole that they used to before. Um, so I think many things have dismantled in our favor, but you have to have the courage and the um boldness to go after it too, right? It's not a magic bullet. Like you still have to do the work.

Corie 32:53

It's still a business.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

You still have it's still a business, you still have to know your market, you still have to know where you fit best, you still have to pursue certain distribution channels, you still have to find the best factories, you still have to do that. But um, even with Carnival, for instance, you know, it there are now these brokers who are independent people in China who will cold call you and ask you, like, do you need XYZ made? It never used to be like that. You'd have to know you'd have to know the person in New York who's representing the factory in China who's a word wins. It was a whole, you know, sort of closed door um network. That is completely changed. TikTok has changed how visible the factories are, and there is a lot more awareness of how things get made and therefore what you can get done and then how you sell. And then if you can build enough of a following, then you have your own customer base with or without the media.

Corie 33:47

I suppose, I suppose, and I guess product tests and all those things change because if you can A B test anything. I suppose, I suppose.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

Without making one thing. Again, another benefit of EI. Yeah. You could decisively come up with an idea, sketch it, run it through the tool I use right now, it's called the Fabricant, build an entire campaign, put it online, have an e-commerce, pre-order, you've not made one thing. Barely any capital investments.

Corie 34:11

Yeah, so of course, yeah. It's managed.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

If I was a young designer now coming up, like that would be all I'd be doing. Like, I didn't have any of these tools.

Corie 34:22

I could imagine, I could imagine. So early days, I don't get into what sparked this entrepreneurial thing. Because it seems to me that wherever space you're in, there's a business coming or popping out it, right? So people seeing it by now.

Growing Up Design Driven And Business Minded

Corie 34:34

So early days for you, when you're growing up, you have fashion or what was in your mind in terms of what you want to do with your life?

SPEAKER_00 34:39

When I look backwards, I was very typically, you know, obsessed with fashion, like many girls, and but probably to a little bit higher of a degree because I was cutting up clothes and restructuring them, and then at the time, the only fashion content we were getting was style with Elsa Clint on CNN. Saturday morning at eight o'clock, I was out, you know, because if you didn't catch it, that was it, it was gone. Um I'm aging myself. I am aging myself anyway. Um so certainly fashion from from the get-go. But my father, who's a surgeon, was also a businessman. And he grew up also typically in a shop um in Mount Lambert. And so my grandparents were also business business owners, you know, and they had many different things, and I think it was just innate, right? Like, oh, or certainly by osmosis, I understood that you could make a living by buying and selling things, you could build something from nothing and imagine it into being, and it become could become your you know self-sustaining lifestyle, right? And so, and I think there was always something very exciting to me about that prop proposition, and um, and so I think to a large degree it just was. I didn't have neither of my parents were 95 um employees, and my mother also had a clothing line for children. She used to take our drawings because she had six of us and turn them into garments and a whole range. I mean, it was a full spectrum brand, and so I think understanding branding even came from her. And I my first job ever was working in the shop with her, you know, selling her clothes. So I never really like considered it anything other than that was my life, my upbringing, and only in retrospect realized like I was destined to do this. I didn't have any other aspiration, and I never thought of having a regular job for better or for worse. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but I have had to teach myself to be more disciplined about starting a business with every idea.

SPEAKER_02 36:43

Right.

SPEAKER_00 36:43

Like it's not don't do it.

Corie 36:46

Um, from the time you have an idea, it's incomplete.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

The worst combination could be to be creative and business-minded. Like it's just terrible. Like, um, so now it's like, okay, I know no, no, no. I literally have like uh notes in my notion that's like ideas.

Corie 37:04

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

Leave them alone. Um so yeah, I think that is certainly um uh I was nurtured into entrepreneurship, and I I love the experience of building something that could serve a client and at the same time, you know, match whatever my my natural skills and abilities are, and better yet if there's some form of impact that is that is an outcome. I've also had to teach myself to focus on the commerce first and then the impact, um, because it has been my tendency to be impact first.

Corie 37:41

In the right room. In the right room. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, maybe in a sense that works, huh? Because you you read or listen to a lot of the greats.

SPEAKER_02 37:50

Yeah.

Corie 37:51

If you focus on that impact, I mean it doesn't always work. There's the truth. Sometimes you make all your impact in your will, and then you're by yourself home trying to figure out where the money is going.

SPEAKER_02 37:59

Yeah.

Corie 37:59

But um, maybe it's a good way to or a pure way to start a business. You're just thinking of okay, how is this going to change? How is this going to solve our problem?

SPEAKER_00 38:08

Yeah, I mean, the great hope is that circular economy models actually work. Yeah, right. Right? Um, it's unfortunately very incongruous with why are you laughing?

Corie 38:21

Because it's true, it's true, it's the best analogy I've heard. There's some leakage in the circular.

SPEAKER_00 38:26

Exactly. Yes, it's kind of an amiibo. It's not a circle. No, it's not. But um, but you know, I mean, the idealists, the idealists like us have to hold space for what that looks like in our worlds. And luckily, we come from uh you know small enough economies that you can test things, and that's what I've continuously tried to do. When when I did the work with Massey, which was Nudge, and then I went on to do spool, both of those I would describe as social enterprises. And Nudge turned into more of an NGO than we originally intended. But either way, right, there was um there was the possibility of it being self-sustaining, and that was the intent from the beginning. And um it if the more and more I make these sort of decisions around how I build my own professional journey, I I can't ignore the desire to have impact. But I do think that I've had enough experience putting impact first to know that it's unsustainable.

Corie 39:21

You know, it could be. It's so funny you say that because I just had a class on social entrepreneurship, it's MBA level, right? And they submitted their assignments, and all the feedback was design geo. Right. You know, is it but I was trying to tell them that there's a very real-world problem with any social enterprise.

SPEAKER_00 39:39

It it's it's a hard uh balance toughest, toughest tough. And we don't have a lot of um financial instruments for like you need a lot of upfront investment to make a social model work sustainably. And the reason why I think a lot of the work that I've done over the last six to seven years turned into more NGO work is because from a grand financing perspective, there's more money there, right? But grand financing does take you down an NGO route. There's only one flow of funds that's going on, right? Of course.

Corie 40:12

Um, and the reality is that if the the bigger the impact is the more that initial investment will look like. But David Gutter stopped talking about business. We're talking about us for too long. So them early days, you're cutting up things. Dolls or your clothes, you're trying to design for yourself.

SPEAKER_00 40:25

Why are you making me start like a mass murderer?

Corie 40:29

Fabrics, fabrics. I don't understand a rumor.

SPEAKER_00 40:34

So what you do is cut up things, yeah.

Corie 40:36

You say that to know, you used to cut up things and put them together. So that's the image I have in my mind.

SPEAKER_00 40:41

I yeah, I was perpetually dissatisfied with my off-the-shelf purchases.

Corie 40:47

Really? And I This is what kind of age you're talking about, though.

SPEAKER_00 40:49

I was like five.

Corie 40:50

As long as that's cutting up things.

SPEAKER_00 40:53

Uh I have one of six kids, right?

SPEAKER_02 40:55

And like And the only girl.

SPEAKER_00 40:56

And the only girl. And I was always keeping everybody back because I had to perfect my look, right? Um, and perfecting my look inevitably meant having pins everywhere. Which is not how you want to go to a child's birthday party with straight pins anywhere. But the look first. They look first. It was always look first.

Corie 41:13

And then daddy must enjoy that. They must be at that time.

SPEAKER_00 41:16

Well, this is when you know you have exceptional parents. Like they particularly my mother embraced it, you know. She was the one who, when I was 16 and 15, deciding on subjects, who was like, you don't want to consider design.

SPEAKER_02 41:28

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:29

Because my father was a surgeon, I was good enough at medicine, good enough at sciences, and when you're in this society, good enough at sciences means you're becoming a medicine a doctor, right? So um she was the one who said, Don't you want to consider design? And it's funny, like design now is much more of a common understanding of professional choice. But um back then, it was like, you know, I knew one designer, and I don't mean just in fashion, I mean architects, I mean graphic designers, like that. This was not such a common pathway to choose. And I didn't really know what that would look like. But thanks to her and and of course my father's support, I went to New York and did um, I did graphic design in in the end. And I think I was always cut out for that, you know. I think the thing about design too is that it's a very structured creative process. I I I still can't draw, and I'm not, I would never call myself an artist, but I I really love the the sort of intellectual process of designing, you know, whether that is output in a garment or is output in a business. And I think that's why those two things almost always collide or conflate because I'm always designing solutions for different outputs, and and some of that ends up being an organization and some of it ends up being a collection.

Corie 42:43

Got it, got it, got it. It makes sense. But our school system does not um it's a little difficult for people who want to design, it's called daydreamers, and you know, I mean it's it's tough. In school, you had any exposure to it, or you're just still doing your thing home.

SPEAKER_00 42:55

I mean, I did art, I did art free levels, but I hate to say it, but I mean that was about it.

unknown 43:01

No.

Corie 43:01

So primary school, definitely not, right? That might be a little more structured.

SPEAKER_00 43:05

No, and I mean, I if I look back on it again, I was like, I was winning art prizes since then, but like um I never thought it was anything serious because again, it's like you grow up, particularly if you're academically strong enough.

Corie 43:18

Yeah, and you're like that.

SPEAKER_00 43:19

No, like as a hobby. Yeah, and at best. And so I I struggle against that. It was only when I got to lower six and I realized, you know what, I don't want to be this compliant, you know, sort of cookie-cutter idea of what I'm supposed to be as a convent girl. Like you're supposed to go after these scholarships and you're supposed to XYZ. I mean, I had to beg to do biochem and arts for your levels. I had to go and sit in my principal's office.

Corie 43:44

Biochem and arts.

SPEAKER_00 43:45

Because biochemists.

Corie 43:47

Biochem and arts is a great combination. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But these courses might be clashing too. They might be a scheduler.

SPEAKER_00 43:53

And then, of course, you're not gonna get a scholarship with that, right? And so systemically, it was like we were there to perform and like But I fully rebelled at that point. I was like, I'm going to design school. I need to have an art credit. And like, um, but to your point, I mean, it was not a straight path. It was not, I I was met with resistance. It wasn't celebrated. Yeah. That I liked art, you know.

Corie 44:14

Of course. Um, especially if you're doing well. I mean, doing well in them sciences is the brightest in the school, right? For people who don't know, and this is St. Joseph Convent, right? So people tell me I can just say convent on the beginning, right?

SPEAKER_00 44:24

They are right, they are correct.

Corie 44:25

They're right. But if you know those schools, they're the same experience. In fact, you know, you're doing well, they're gonna push you into sciences and business, maybe if you're right there with them and and and everything else is well a joke. Yeah, it is, it is, it is, it is. So, business and stuff on your mind, you're designing for anybody at that point in time, or your focus is design school.

SPEAKER_00 44:44

No, no, I um absolutely not. I had no idea where this was going. At the time, I also like I just loved the fashion industry and the fashion industry, this is in the late 90s, um, with supermodels, and you know, it was even more of a thing back then. And so I wanted to model, I wanted to, you know, I was entering into the whole and not just wanting to design. And so I think it was just like the um it was more the experience of being in this aspirational industry that I was obsessed with, living in New York and you know, persons is downtown, so you're just in the mix. So I hadn't figured out what my voice was or that I was going after a particular career at the time. In fact, I chickened out towards the end and I ended up doing graphic design because I wanted to come back to Trinidad and I was very homesick and I didn't know any other fashion designers who had made it here, you know. So you say checking out while you were in New York, you decided you're really when I had to choose my major, I decided on communication design.

Corie 45:45

I see.

SPEAKER_00 45:46

Which I look back now on and know that that was just fair.

Corie 45:49

I see. And what school was this? What happens?

SPEAKER_00 45:51

Parsons. I went to Parsons and then I went to Central St. Martin's, which is in London, also very good school, very well known for fashion, and still did graphic design.

Corie 45:59

Right. Stage

Grief And Choosing A Bigger Life

Corie 46:01

Reddit.

SPEAKER_00 46:01

Yeah, and it's only when my brother died, I was 25. You know, he died very young at 18. It was very tragic, and that is what made me go into fashion because I felt like he didn't have the opportunity to live a full life, and I had to. I couldn't have a half-ass life, you know, I couldn't live halfway. And I was in a decent job working in sort of like sex and city lifestyle in New York, and I thought I had made it, you know. But his death really propelled me into like, okay, what does a big life really look like? You know, how do I live up to my potential outside of what I already know? And how do I actualize my dreams? And I think ever since then that's been my path, you know.

Corie 46:44

It's funny all those things, Sheik, you know, when you're young, you have this tendency to think like I have very young brothers. Like what the youngest certain fathers, other children is called the next set. The oldest one is might be 28, 29, 30, somewhere only. Right. He run any business now. I do, I used to do this and then ask him for money when I need money. But um, it's amazing to see him prosper and do really, really well and and and follow his dream. He's trained as a chef. Right. And now he's running our business, which is a merchandising company, completely different, but amazing how much he does. And I have a younger sister who's 20, maybe 24, 25 now, and she she got into an accident that it altered her life.

SPEAKER_00 47:22

Right.

Corie 47:23

And I see now with my two brothers, they're both older than her, how much they pay attention to their lives now.

SPEAKER_00 47:30

As compared to before.

Corie 47:31

Yes, in terms of this sense of time, it it it it shifts. Is this the experience you're talking about where you start?

SPEAKER_00 47:37

Yeah, no, I mean on every level. When he died, he died in a car accident, um, along with three of his friends, and they were all very young, 16, 18. Um, and it was impossible to not be completely shaken by that, right? Loss of life at a young age, tragic overnight and you know, um the concept that life isn't certain. Nothing you think is set for tomorrow is, right? And so therefore, what do you do with that information? You know, how do you can you really just sort of carry on? Like it affected all of us differently. I think it's very fascinating how grief has a very unique impact on every single person. We all lost the same brother, we've all reacted differently, right? Um, but collectively we've all honored his life consistently until now. And uh in so doing, my version of that has been, I mean, I literally called my first collection Pilar. Um, but more so, much more from a much more substantial perspective, I took on the call to live fully. Correct, not and and that's so like subjective, right? Like, what does live fully mean? That evolves with time. Now, now that I'm in my 40s and have two young kids, like it has a very different tone.

Corie 48:52

Of course.

SPEAKER_00 48:52

Did you get to define it?

Corie 48:53

Yes, yeah, at whatever stage.

SPEAKER_00 48:55

Absolutely. Um, yeah.

Corie 48:57

Yeah. Before I get back into fashion, random question about brothers

Sound Clash Culture And Creativity

Corie 49:00

again. You was in zygon shouting on the mic on them kind of thing too. What you was cutting the place on the thing. What category are we putting this in, David? You put in this one hoppy and them interview, or you was in Volkswagen.

SPEAKER_00 49:11

Oh my god, I'm a diehard some clash girl. Die hard, diehard.

Corie 49:15

I never see you outside, you know, clash hunting you was there.

SPEAKER_00 49:17

I'm always there. Karen Crates. I mean, Karen Crates, really, just to get in the Club of Fria, but either way.

Corie 49:24

Who knew? Who knew?

SPEAKER_00 49:26

Oh my god, I I am the biggest Zygon fan. Like, and Eve, my brother, and my brother Ben, um, who were the founding team of Zygon and have really very um impressively carried this tradition on for so long and continue to stay at the top of the game. Um, really they taught me what clash culture was. I got exposed to you know what it means to battle around sound plates, like dub plates and and the just the genre of the music that is very unique and very very particular, and the appreciation, I mean I'm a big reggae fan, and I I think just them being so embedded in it, um, it was impossible to avoid, but I also genuinely am. And so I'm fascinated with the culture, and um, and I think maybe to some degree, that's why my first collection ever was inspired by the Bobushanti. And you know, I had these big sound speakers made for the stage, and I had original music made by Keishab Singh, you know, who's become much, much more popular now. You know, I don't even think it was just now yet. And like, so music has always been very integral in my process, and I almost I I if I come back again, I want to come back as a musician. Really? There's just something so spectacular about the creative process as a musician. I had the yeah unique um opportunity to be part of the development of this song No Greater Time with Mohammed and Kes and all the people they brought into that project, and I just selfishly did it to be around that process, you know. Like I just because when you create a dress, right? There's so many steps, and like you create a song like if you're good in a session, yeah.

Corie 51:05

Then you call in the people you call in, not me.

SPEAKER_00 51:07

You know, all I'm trying to create, it don't work so non-Mohammed's no, it's such a such a divine creative capacity, yeah. You know, and I have so much envy for it. So I think with my brothers, it was not dissimilar to be in the room, and you know, he Eve called Tiny Stevens, he was probably 15 years old to get It's a Pity Plate. Oh shit. That's how they won. He was so young. Oh my god. And they won whatever that first song clash they ever won was, and that was just like mind-blowing to me with that.

Corie 51:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like it was, and it's funny you bring that song up because it's one of those songs where I don't know that before Zyga, a lot of people was running down that dub plate. No, that's it. You're so it's song like a woman's song, you know what I mean? It's not it's not a dub plate kind of song.

SPEAKER_00 51:51

You're absolutely right. And so I think, yeah, I think the the clash culture for me was really more that I didn't love sitting up till five in the morning, waiting for them to come on, you know.

Corie 52:01

Yes, we agree. Particularly now, right? No, but salute to them. I mean, Zygon, the the imprint of every time we have people here who are around clash culture, there's a buzz. Yeah. Because what that era did for us coming up, uh it's hard to explain to people who, you know.

SPEAKER_00 52:17

No, you have to have to have loved it.

Corie 52:19

Yeah, and you had to love it.

SPEAKER_00 52:21

Yeah, appreciated the art form, and I very much um feel privileged to have had so much exposure. And yeah, I'm still up there, not necessarily on the mic, but um that's why we waited. Nobody wants that.

Corie 52:32

You want to kill some?

SPEAKER_00 52:33

Nobody wants that. I have taken one DJ lesson, it is an aspiration, but we'll see.

Corie 52:37

Yeah. All right. Well, we we have hope. We hold out hope. So all this time you're modeling and stuff already.

Public Scandal And Hard Growth

Corie 52:43

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 52:44

I started modeling for mailing when I was probably 16. Um, eventually I became a strong tobacco. That was 2008.

Corie 52:51

Okay, so what led to that? You you want it or do you just want it to be none? No, no. I hear I interviewed you, right? I want to say salute to Welly S and Mel Gabriel. You're a friend? Yes. Yeah, I figured so. That is too smooth for y'all not to know each other before. Excellent interview. I encourage anybody to watch. But here I ask you, what you like to talk about release and his famous universe? Correct. Right? So David, they were keeping time on, right? But what made you go into interview?

SPEAKER_00 53:16

Well, it was also right after my brother died. I was sort of figuring out, you know, if I'm not gonna do what I was doing before, what am I going to do? I ended up auditioning for three canal show. Nice. Like casting for nothing, right? So I don't know how I got cast. So now I don't know how I got cast. I went to the first rehearse, so then Mandel was like, no, this is not working. Um, sounds like Mandel. So I ended up, Melin kind of took me under her wing and she's like, Why don't you come with me and let's style the show instead, right? So that was my foray into fashion. And that kind of just got me into this whole, you know, I just started showing up for things. I showed up for that audition for Mr. Nan Tobago on a whim. Um just out of pure adventure. I was just in this stage of my life, like I have to figure out what I'm gonna do, you know. And then I became Mr. Nan Tobago, in my opinion, also like and I can't really explain why. Um, I really wasn't well positioned. No, I don't think so. And I and it showed because I I struggled through that, and I was a very short training period, it's about three months, and I found um the whole thing very challenging.

SPEAKER_02 54:35

Right.

SPEAKER_00 54:35

And I tried to quit several times, but it wasn't happening, and and I knew at the end, looking back, that it really was to help me learn how to be much better at things like this. I I was terrible in the beginning. Um it was like informal media training, it was learning how to express my voice in a much more public way, and and most of all, it was my foray into fashion. That was how I learned. I got PT Lyes was very generous, gave me an opportunity to design some of my wardrobe. And that was the beginning of me realizing I came back from Vietnam with all those pieces I made in that little tailor shop. And I went to Diane Hunt first. I said, you know, I want to show a collection in Fashion Week. At the time, Fashion Week was a big event, and I asked Miling to mentor me, and that was killing take off from there. It did, because I was already Mr. Antobago. I was able to sort of leverage that brand awareness towards my line, and I think that was my way of saying, I don't really want to be a beauty queen, I really want to be known for fashion. And but I already had a public image, right? And so I had a way to sort of leverage that towards, and at the time there was no social media, right? So there were no followers.

Corie 55:43

It's a different time, it's a whole different time. It's really, really interesting to talk about, and when I heard you all talk about in in in that interview, like I listen, I was watching some things from today's eyes versus what we know because that's 2008-9. You're talking about, right?

SPEAKER_00 55:57

Yeah, I mean, there was barely even Facebook.

Corie 55:59

That's what no Facebook was just just an economy. Nobody knows what it is yet.

SPEAKER_00 56:03

No, nobody was really using it.

Corie 56:04

No, no, no. And it might be a few posts, or you had to say single or married, that was about it.

SPEAKER_00 56:09

Interested. You remember that? What is this nebula's interested?

unknown 56:16

Okay.

Corie 56:16

Listen, you bring back interested and Elsa Clenchan one day, one of my favorite conversations. But again, I saw y'all talk openly about because we saw with Miss Universe, and then there's a leak and all this kind of thing that you're just living through some of that. And when if you want to hear that story, I think you should go and watch the interview with Mel. I think it was well handled. And I appreciate you talking about it a lot. And a part of it is because when I look at the eras I get, yeah. Like I'm looking at social media. No, I don't know how active you are on social media outside of the exercise and Jake and Fitness and thing, right? But I see social media now where people dealing with these things so differently to back then. Oh my god. Because young girls have a only fans.

SPEAKER_00 56:57

You can literally make a living out of it.

Corie 56:59

It's a whole different world. So sometimes a lot of these conversations I have here, people talk about things and then they look back at these experiences with today's eyes. Yeah. So I want to encourage people if you go back and you look at that interview, you had to understand that that time was a time where anything like that was unheard of. The whole dealing with family and the public and all those kind of things. I have one random memory, even three canal too, you know, coincidentally. I was at a three-canal show, just in the audience. I mean, I know you're there them time, you're a star, you know. So I had the next section, right? Any other side, up any back. And I remember artists on stage, and this is right coming off of these things, and he kind of was like, and yes, and I was like, Why would you do that? That's crazy to me.

SPEAKER_00 57:40

But listen, yeah, it made me much much stronger. Um, it taught me so much about accountability and um that we were really only in control of ourselves and our own destiny is dependent on that, right? And so I spent a year after the tapes were leaked in pure state of anger and feeling victimized and feeling, and I mean there's an element of that that's true, but I think I consider Pilar dying as one major turning point in my life, and I consider the sex tapes another major one, and not for reasons that may be superficially seen, much more internal growth. It changed my perspective on what I had the capacity, what I have the capacity to do if I can own my choices, and and owning your choices goes in whatever direction you choose, right? Um, and uh you're absolutely right. The context of that was you know, the tapes were being sold on DVDs and movies own.

Corie 58:37

Like people ain't gonna remember these things. Because they again you're living in a world now where everything is just distributed automatically online, they don't understand yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:45

It was painful, it was painful, and it was mostly painful for my family. I I recognized that I had made choices that I thought were independent, but no man is an island, and every choice has a ripple effect.

SPEAKER_02 58:58

Of course.

SPEAKER_00 58:58

Um, so I think it just became a very self-reflective opportunity. And right after I sort of went through all of that, I decided to apply to Project Runway. And I definitely think there's a relationship between my spiritual evolution because of that, and the catapult into a different sphere as a result of just being like, you know, this is my life. I have to, I have to create what I want out of it, you know.

Corie 59:22

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Like I like I see you're outside now, I see you in district all the time. Like you all of us change over the years, right? But yeah, yes, the demeanor now is very serious, I'll say, right?

SPEAKER_02 59:32

Maybe it's serious.

Corie 59:33

Very focused and so on, you know what I mean? It's get to there, get your coffee, get out, you know what I mean? It's very different. But yeah, I remember them telling you outside. I've never I heard I appreciate you and Mel talking about that because there's there's one particular influencer that I've seen. He was arrested the other day in Guyana, and he's famous for leaking tapes of people.

SPEAKER_02 59:49

Oh wow.

Corie 59:49

And I find it to be well, it's crude and all the things, right? But I I appreciated that interview because I feel like it's an opportunity for young women who might be going through this now to just look at that. I would encourage anybody to look at it because I was there and you were outside. Yeah, and I wasn't gonna be outside.

Project Runway Learning Fast And Winning

Corie 1:00:07

So, Project Runway, your your your application process for that. As somebody who grew up and born and grew in Trinidad, it does not feel like if you could apply it to a TV show that's showing all over the world. I mean, it's like what how how did that come about?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:20

That's a great question. And and just to connect the two, as much as contextually, my experience back then was very different because of the technology and the age and space space of media, there's still girls who message me now asking for advice. Really? Because at the end of the day, we still live in a very conservative Trinidad remains quite conservative, you know, and it's difficult to navigate being a pariah and being particularly on the on the female side of it, or the victim side, I should say. Um because I think it happens to more men than anybody really wants to talk about as well. So how do you create space to to support these uh situations that uh inevitably create shame and they create ostracization and they create like it's it's something that continues to happen. So I don't want to put down that it does have the impact that it continues to have, you know?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:11

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:12

Um and similarly, with participating in things that feel like outside of your realm of of what you should do and can do. I mean, there's a lot logistical nuance to that that I was I am an American citizen. So I could apply, right? Now I think since my season, they've opened it up, so you don't have to be an American citizen. But at the time you did have to, so I had that privilege. Um, but I think really it was an audacity, right? It was an audacity, like, why not? You know, and to be completely honest, it was I didn't expect anything to come from it. Yeah, you know, I didn't I just thought I would tell a story that I applied once.

Corie 1:01:48

Right. Really? That's what you're thinking about.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:50

Yes. Yeah, like that's a good story, right? Like, oh, I applied to that once.

Corie 1:01:54

Yeah, that would be a good enough story.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:57

It takes a certain level of courage to do that, right?

Corie 1:01:59

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:00

And then I thought when I got accepted to ask to come see for this first audition, I was like, well, there's no way they're gonna. So I said, Well, at least I could say I went to the audition. And this went on.

Corie 1:02:10

So wait, the first step of the process is what? Is it a video and let's do it?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:13

I downloaded uh something from Twitter.

Corie 1:02:15

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:15

And um I I was able to fill out most of the application, which is the other reason why I felt like why not, you know, with the exception of that one very important box, like, do you know how to sew? No, which I didn't at the time.

Corie 1:02:27

And I said, That is that is what you call it. Come from Tremago for sure. Yes, and figure it out, right? I got it.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:36

I mean, there there's footage of Michael Cause saying, like, I looked her in the eye, and I knew I knew she was straight up lying. But anyway, um, you know, and Heidi knew too. I mean, they look at me in the first episode if you watch it and they say, All right, let's see what, let's see what you can do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, um, it was almost like a dare, you know. And I took it on. I just figured, well, same attitude. The first episode, I was like, can you imagine I could say I was on the show? Right. Like, I was actually on the real show, and I figured, oh, I go home. I mean, think about it. That was the other benefit of the sex saves. It's like, how much more embarrassed could I possibly be?

Corie 1:03:14

So that ain't bodily in you again. Like, got it, got it.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:17

How bad could it be? It could never be bad.

Corie 1:03:19

It can't be as vulnerable. I understand.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:22

So I didn't use that in my favor.

Corie 1:03:23

Of course, of course, of course. I got you, I got you, I got you.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:27

But then it went on and went on and went on. And the competitive streak kicks in when I realize, wow, I'm in in I'm in the running.

Corie 1:03:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:34

And then that sort of lazy fair, adventurous attitude went out the window.

Corie 1:03:39

It did change.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:40

Yes.

Corie 1:03:40

Because for people who wouldn't remember, you film this, you know you win while we're not watching it.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:44

Of course, yeah.

Corie 1:03:44

You tell people your family and them, let people know. Like my parents in the audience. So let's keep this secret from us.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:50

Hello, when you have a million-dollar contract.

Corie 1:03:52

Oh, and an NDA.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:53

You are not saying anything.

Corie 1:03:58

Because again, all yeah, I had Batman everywhere, even there was Thursday night. I'm running home to watch people who could sew and can't sew. And you know, the funny thing about the not able to sew thing, right? Is that when I watch like uh American Idol or some of those talent shows now, you have people who they put there who care sing for entertainment. They know that. You feel like that when they put you there, they say Louis Brady.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:21

Listen, they called me and they were like, You've been cast, right? Right.

unknown 1:04:26

I was like, what?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:27

I was like, no, I literally.

Corie 1:04:28

And at this time you entered that or you I was introduced. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:30

I told the lady. I said, and this was all on camera, I didn't realize that they were filming because they do all the BTS from then, right? I said, um, thank you very much, but I cannot attend.

Corie 1:04:42

But why?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:44

I couldn't say why. I was like, I'll I'll apply the next time and blah blah blah, and hung up the phone and they called me back. Like, listen. They're no longer filming. Like, listen, you have to come.

Corie 1:04:55

Like, yeah, they're not going back and winning.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:57

If answer buts, thousands of people apply to this thing, and they've cast 16 people out of however many in those archetypes, right? Having then brought that same production team, the same castle to support the production of Carnival Cat's work. We now know what the rubric is. It's a rubric. You have to have the scandalous one. You have to have.

Corie 1:05:18

Of course, of course, of course. Yeah, to make the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:20

You have to. So we all were fitting a formula. And I must have been a new castle formula.

Corie 1:05:27

First person to go.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:28

Right, does it easy, easy? She has an accent. She all these things in one.

Corie 1:05:34

Like, well, yeah, I suppose you deal with swimming uphill for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:38

All these things in one, like, yeah, have a sex tape, like, I mean, like TV gold.

Corie 1:05:42

You know, that's another thing, right? Not to go back to that, but people might remember that this was international. It was not a locus.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:48

International. It was. It was Andrew Lano.

Corie 1:05:51

Yeah, you remember the news? Well, like, who asked him? You remember? Yeah, you went through it. So when you first went over, it's in New York, where's it been filmed?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:58

It was filmed at Parsons, ironically. All right, nice. You back. Full circle. That was the thing, right? Like I recognized when Pilar died that my whole journey was to return to what I always wanted to do, the cutting up things, things, right? Um, but more formally, with a little bit more, you know. And so when I ended up on the runway in Parsons, it's where it's filmed in the fashion school, which is a different building to where I went to school downtown.

Corie 1:06:23

It really felt like a divine singularity. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:28

Um, so yes.

Corie 1:06:29

So what's the time between when they tell you you're in and you're going over there?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:32

Oh my god, it's like a week.

Corie 1:06:33

Really? So when is this four-month period? You say you learn to sew in about a four-month stretch, or is it after you take yes or something?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:38

You want the real story?

Corie 1:06:39

I want it. I hear that's a bigonian lady who teaches.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:43

So when I got the call and I said no, then I start to say yes. I called Delia Aline, who was my primary seamstress at the time. Wonderful, wonderful girl and lady. And she was teaching at UTT. And um, I said, Lily, listen, smuggle me into UTT and just teach me anything. Anything. So we thankfully it was like the beginning of summer, and so the classrooms were available, and they gave me permission to come in. I just found an old email from Christopher Nathan, who was at the time in charge of the school, and I thanked, I thanked him at the time, having already won for honoring, you know, my crazy scheme to like learn how to sew. And she, it was two weeks. I had two weeks.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:23

Also, it was not four months.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:24

It was not for four months.

Corie 1:07:25

Was I tracked back to when I said yes on the form because I couldn't say two weeks and then I kind of learned too you know, that is acceptance, that's a you know, I mean manifestation when you click the yes, so I guess I mean you know, but now that I have young children, I don't really want them to know the story because technically that is lying.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:42

I'm not trying to, you know.

Corie 1:07:46

But it's so that is amazing.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:48

So weeks, so she taught me, you know, how to pattern a pair of pants, how to pattern a sleeve, like the harder things how to draft um on flat patterns, which is the more formal way to create garments. She taught me how to drape, which it just so happens I was naturally good at. And uh, and I mean, literally, I'd never sat on a machine, I'd never thread a machine. If you watch the first episode, the cameraman had to sit. Eventually took the camera off his shoulder and put it on the table. I was taking so long to just thread the machine, you know. It was nerve-wracking.

Corie 1:08:23

Yeah, yeah, it was.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:23

You felt that it was nerve-wracking. Everybody else was running around bustling, and I'm still threading.

Corie 1:08:29

And here now they emphasize that in episode one. You know, every time they show somebody else doing something, and when they reach, they come back to you like a long time.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:40

But design and stuff you're comfortable with by then, or still I design, I design and I have a very strong design background, right? So that was because of my educational background, and then I'd already been designing clothes.

Corie 1:08:52

But it is graphic design, you didn't learn designing clothes formally at all. So self-taught.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:56

Self-taught, yeah, self-taught from back in five-year-olds. Cutting up clothes, cutting up things.

Corie 1:09:01

That's how crazy. So you you were in the room now with people who went to school.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:05

Oh my god, some of them were exceptional, yeah. Formally, you know, construction-wise, technically, like you could turn the garment inside out in words, you know what I mean? Um, Victor was incredibly good. Um, Joshua, who became my friend and arch rival, became second to me. Very, very technically sound. Um but in a way, as we went through the process, well, one I learned just watching and picking up things in the room. A lot of my club um classmates has probably to their detriment, were quite helpful. Yeah, the points are voting. Um and uh and I didn't know what rules there were, so I didn't know when I was breaking rules. So a lot of the times I would just come up with what seemed intuitively doable. And a lot of them were like, What are you doing? You can't cut it this way, you can't do this, you can't do that. I'm like, why? You know, and I think from a creative perspective, that actually worked in my favor. So a lot of times things that were technically wrong turned out to be like a unique perspective, and so I think that that that worked at times, and but no, Delia, I mean, she just gave me like whatever crash cause to kids.

Corie 1:10:10

It's crazy, madness, and then you know in front of Nina Garcia, hi the clue, man, and Michael Course.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:16

I cannot can you imagine what like that if that's not audacity, I don't know what is.

Corie 1:10:21

Yeah, you know. So where's it was it more nerve-wracking, but the in the room, the production part, or is it when you have to show the gum?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:27

The runway was every time. Well, once you know you could get slashed, right?

Corie 1:10:31

Right, yeah, of course. Of course. But it's raw as well, because now you you you put this thing out, and I mean, had you clue on them nice on the number, but they was brutal.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:41

Do you remember when he called me Reggae Jesus? Do you remember that? And all I could do is buzz her lapic, right? I was like, you're right. Like there's nothing I can say. Like, I'm probably going home, but at least it's hilarious, you know. Um, well, again, I can say this now because it's in retrospect and I've won, right? Um, but I do think that in a way, having such incredibly successful and talented expertise um critiquing the work was its own masterclass. And what y'all don't see is that we put we're shooting day after day, right? So we were given an opportunity, and we were also sequestered, we had no phones, we had no outside information of the world. So it was like a residency, you know, it was like a uh high-intense, high-intensity creative incubator.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:30

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:31

And my I watched my skills improve between the rapidity of like turning over work and the critiques that were happening from very established people, taking it from that sort of um instructional perspective, reframed, getting blasted.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:48

Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:49

And the one good thing about going to very good design schools is that most of the time you're just being critiqued. You have to build up a muscle around receiving feedback and iterating and you know being open to objective feedback constantly, which is something I think in this region we're not taught to do. You know, you're sort of taught to like don't raise your hand until you know the answer. No, you'll be quiet. You know, don't have any kind of wild perspective on this topic. You know, you have to sit and and regurgitate what you've been taught, you know.

Corie 1:12:16

Of course.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:17

Very, very different. Yeah.

Corie 1:12:19

And different design school ladies are going to world. You cognizant of the fact that now you're on TV, regardless, regardless if you've recorded the city.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:25

And I don't know what they're gonna edit.

Corie 1:12:27

Yeah, I suppose. You know, I suppose.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:28

In fact, I told somebody this other day, everybody keeps asking me I've been if I've watched the Tyra Banks um uh uh documentary. And a friend of mine was she came second in one of the most significant um series, and her name is Yayel Acosta, and I met with her the day before I went onto the show. And she was like, Anya, just imagine they can hear your thoughts. So I was very aware of the power of editing and the power of stories being concocted around sound bites.

Corie 1:13:01

Here's for entertainment, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:02

You know, and it's reality TV, right? But reality TV doesn't mean that it's the truth. And I think it I went into that very aware that like everything I said, everything I did was potentially had the potential to be construed in one way or another. Thankfully, our culture of our set was nothing close to what I gather America's next stop model was, but still, you know, I I was aware of the fact that like if I want to show up a certain way, like it's on me to show up that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Corie 1:13:32

I was telling you before we start about the facial expressions because we were watching that for the whole show. And I tell myself, but is either there's a real good acting job or something because it had some weeks. I sure you're going home, you know. Did he say something real all in terms? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:44

Real when I came back from having designed the final collection, remember, I had nothing ready. And Tim Gunn was like, Anya, like, let's get it together. Um, and then I showed what I had, and it was horrible. Like, I can admit that, you know. And uh yeah, I mean, they sent me home, if you remember that in the penultimate episode, and it was devastated. Imagine to get that far.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:07

Great.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:08

And I also knew that I had let myself down. I had let myself down from this standpoint that I had given myself all this pressure to design a collection that would land with these American judges. And it was really that was a big turning point for me too, because then I showed that collection and Nina Garcia, who was then the editor of Mary Claire, now the editor of Elle, she was like, Anna, you're the only Caribbean girl up there. You have to represent yourself. And then I was like, Well, I do have a choice anyway, right? And thankfully they let us go back and buy more fabrics, and that's how that collection, Tobago Love, came to life. You know, it was me. You know, it was me, the island girl, and it was me, the version of me that found itself on this incredible stage at New York Fashion Week. And it has remained with me as a lesson to like just continue to be authentic because everything else fails, you know.

Corie 1:14:59

Yeah, that wanted to see some melts because we watching home waiting for the accent to kick in. So you know, this is the men, right? We had to find some melts to focus on because we don't know if the garment good or look good to me. When I hear them critique and I shocked I said it looked nice, he puts them covered, you know. But you talk like who you still, right? People had trouble understanding you, or you just be I mean, I never got that feedback.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:21

I mean, to be fair, I have a bit of a convent accent.

Corie 1:15:24

It could be that you know, like the convent accents will pay for something at at last. Find use for it.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:32

But I really don't know another way to talk, right? Like, I mean, I have lived, I was born in New York. I I lived there for 15 years on and off. Like it never disappeared. And so I think it just I I didn't try to be authentic. And because I think that also reads and and I also knew that like there was something really unique. I think I was probably the first ever non-American contestant. After that, there was an avalanche of non-American contestants because I think they recognized that the diversity of stories was actually very powerful for TV, but at the time it was unusual. Right. So I I don't know if they didn't understand me. I never asked. Clearly, clearly. Well, you know, there's such a thing as subtitles.

Corie 1:16:14

So Yeah, you mustn't even thinking about that. You're trying to remember a daily team show.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:19

No, I didn't know I was getting through today. I guess.

Corie 1:16:22

I guess I remember one particular challenge where they gave you all some ridiculously small budgets and you had to go.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:27

Remember, I lost my money. I'm also the first and only contestant in the history of 20 something seasons ever lost their money.

Corie 1:16:33

Listen, what if you're your hand, you know, like them school trying to get money to go each?

SPEAKER_00 1:16:39

Oh my god.

Corie 1:16:40

You don't save money. So you come in at an even smaller budget.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:42

I mean.

Corie 1:16:43

So you go out through it, you find out your win. I guess those people for people who don't remember, those you would do, they would show the whole backroom process. They give you a challenge, you do it. Yeah. Then you have to get models to walk the runway. Right. And then you come back on that same runway and there's an elimination.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:57

Yep.

Corie 1:16:57

You find out your win. What was your feeling in that moment?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:00

When I won?

Corie 1:17:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:01

Oh my god, it was I don't remember many moments in my life where I felt just absolute pure joy and exhilaration. I think being the first and only girl of a family of six, I've always had a weight of responsibility. So even when you do well in school or you, you know, um, I was always unknowingly to my brothers like high performing. Um, I was always getting prizes and whatever. But none of that felt like the level of fulfillment that this felt like. And a lot of it had to do with the fact that, to your point, I didn't know that anybody else knew I was even doing the show for less than I won. So it was a very individual expression of accomplishments.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:43

And the best time of my life having won the show and having gone on to do many other things since was those three months that nobody knew.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:51

It was a joy. Because I knew what I did, and I knew why I did it, and I knew that it had nothing to do with anybody else. And I knew I accomplished it too, that it was a pretty exceptional accomplishment. Um, but I didn't have to deal with anybody else's version of what that meant.

Corie 1:18:08

You know, yeah, you get to just enjoy that for a little bit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:12

It was glorious until I mean listen, I'm very grateful for all the love. But from a just a pure spiritual exercise, it was an it was an achievement of something much higher than anything that I had ever thought I could. And it really had nothing to do with the logic of it, right? Because it was entirely illogical.

Corie 1:18:30

Yeah, when you think about it. Because if you say you're going in thinking, well, alright, I'll make it to the show, somewhere along the line the audacity to want to win too hard to kick in.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:39

We were sequestered in a hotel the two days before the final, and we were fully sequestered. We couldn't even see the other contestants, you know. And that was a real um reprogramming of my mind in those days. All I had was a little notepad from the hotel room and a little pencil. I don't know what they thought we were gonna do with anything else. Like, we're gonna magically be inspired by like a TV show at that moment. But anyway, um, I just wrote over and over, and this sounds so cliched, but I wrote over and over, I am winning Project Run Me, I'm winning Project Run me, and I stood in the mirror, I had nothing else to do, stood in the mirror and said it to myself. Oh, until I brainwashed myself. And I realized in that moment that I had come second so much in my life, second in class, second in ballet exams, second in, and it was a programming. And then I was like, why can't I? I'm not necessarily any more qualified than anyone else to win this, but I'm just as qualified, just as deserving. And I think that was the big shift.

Corie 1:19:37

Makes sense. Makes sense. So, other than that, in the three months, you're watching how we're talking about how you're a goal monthing, you're watching the very entertaining. You and your family must be watching everybody saying that.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:52

And then it went along with it too, right?

Corie 1:19:54

Because like man. Yeah, you know in the outcome must be something else. You're showing us so it was. There's that second victory now, in a sense, when the rest of us find out. What's that like for you when everybody else knows?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:08

And I mean, I think I'm, for better or worse, very, very patriotic. And I I loved the experience that this was a collective win, you know? That it was something that everybody felt like they they owned. And I think that was a much different experience, the complete opposite in a way from what I described earlier, when I won very much in my own little silo. And so I won that second first real win in in real life, but second for me was um a real another form of joy that I accomplished something that other people got to participate in and feel a sense of exuberance with, and and all that came from that, you know. Like I think there was a swell of people deciding to pursue design, to consider creative professions, to come out of the mindset that this is not something you can do, you know. And all of that has been continues to be such uh an like it's the gift that keeps on giving.

Corie 1:21:02

Yeah, yeah. It's so interesting when you say when you describe those early school days and have no real example, but you you were able to provide an example for so many people. Yeah, what is your feedback when learning in the streets now? When you're outside and seeing people coming onto you.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:16

So much love.

Corie 1:21:16

Men to me and tell me because you start with misogyny, nobody can you make rewatch.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:20

We want to be a misogynist and still watch it.

Corie 1:21:25

Yeah, have a good point. But that's definitely read her.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:27

No, no, no, no, no. I um no, no, a tremendous amount of respect and acknowledgement for the ways in which it has given people license. You know, you it's very hard to become something you haven't seen. So I think for and and it has like cross-cutting impact. It's not just in fashion. It I think it it creates, well, the audacity to do something that is so outside of the realm of possibility.

Corie 1:21:51

Yeah, and even Caribbean-wide, because people talk about it everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:54

Totally. Like when Tyson won the voice, I mean it was the same thing, right?

Corie 1:21:58

Right, right. Yeah, we feel it the same way, yeah. Of course, of course, of

After The Win Building Real Wealth

Corie 1:22:01

course. No, you said something earlier about Michael Coast giving you advice. You have access to these people after you win, what what happens?

SPEAKER_00 1:22:07

Not much. No. Um, I think some of these reality TV shows were much better, and they've evolved since like Heidi and Tim went on to do a show called Next in Fashion that was much more intentionally about the business success of the um contestants and the winners. We didn't have any of that. I had to manufacture and leverage everything I did. Really? Everything, everything. And I mean, it's a at the time in particular, it was a very big I mean, this show has been syndicated across the world up until now. Like, that's why I still get a certain amount of continuous um attention through Project Runway because there's some territories that are still seeing that season for the first time, you know. So I have but I have been very intentional.

Corie 1:22:47

They go in back like oh god, chill.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:49

Yeah, like I get random followers from like Fiji all of a sudden in like you know, 2026.

Corie 1:22:54

They love you.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:56

Oh my god, I just watched okay, great. Would you like to buy something? Um so no, and I think this story was so universal, you know, and I think it there continues to be this resonance between people who come from smaller parts of the world and achieve something on a global stage and what that looks like. Um that that's a story that never gets old, you know.

Corie 1:23:19

Yeah, I understand. I would have thought that when you win, there's a fast track to becoming a global designer.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:24

Not at all. Not at all. I mean, and I was very young in the industry. I didn't really know what to your point earlier, I hadn't predetermined, you know, the one of the most successful contestants out of the show is Christian Seriano, but I think he was already embedded in the New York fashion scene. And well, I don't know for sure, but he certainly knew how to work it. You know, I I was just like, oh, okay. And I who I do now, you know. Um, and I think I've made certain choices I would not make now. I think I I shouldn't have come home so fast. I should have stayed in New York. I I technically did, but I became tourism ambassador for the then government. I did a lot of work um on behalf of Renan Tobago that I would have probably been a little bit more careful. And this is not to say that I wasn't very proud of it, but it did take me away from the track of just doing my clothing line, you know. And I think that's why now 10 years later, I'm finally applying so much of what I have learned over the last 10 years about the business of fashion to my pre-existing awareness of my own skills and the brand that I already have. And but I didn't commit myself at the time to the business of fashion. And that's probably why the first half of this interview is so much about the business because it's become much more my focus, and why you see me in the strict, I'm just like 100, you know. Um, and I am enjoying that a lot, you know. Um, so to your point about you know, people get to have gotten to see what it looks like to succeed in a creative track. My next mission is really to show what that looks like financially. Of course.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:56

You know, of course.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:57

Um, why is there only one Rihanna? You know what I'm saying? Like, why can't there be more of us who succeed um from a commercial perspective and really demonstrate again to your earlier point that how do we lead in these industries? You know, and that takes uh a certain amount of strategic focus and awareness that like we I have to keep refining my products to to get the product market fits and and reach the right audiences so that the scale of the business can match the again, the optical success is not just optics, you know.

Corie 1:25:28

Yeah, yeah. And I appreciate the fact that you kind of have us in mind while you're doing that because you you see how it inspires. Because even though like now you look much more serious than I see it 20 years ago, but a lot happier, a lot happier. Oh, you seem to be very oh that's good.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:43

Yeah, you don't feel it. Yeah, I do.

Corie 1:25:45

Yeah, it's a difference. Like there's a I I'm not sure because life change, life move on, is children and so on. Please go and listen to how um Anya spoke about motherhood with Mel Gabriel again. Excellent interview. I agree on everything that you said. Let him go and watch it on the game, especially as somebody who expecting a baby with not David anytime today.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:07

Oh, really? Oh my god.

Corie 1:26:08

No wish anytime now we call we just happy to let you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:13

Oh my god.

Corie 1:26:17

Wait, wait, she was late too. That's why we enough. No, but congratulations on it. Congratulations on it. It's something that it became somebody that everybody is a big fan of. Your name became a household name in Trinda and Tobago. So we want to be a part of that journey of the financial success too, you know, because it's important. It's important.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:34

It is, I think, from an inspiration and aspirational standpoint, from a pure logistical standpoint, the more inroads that are made into new markets is the more people can benefit from that. Um, so your point earlier about, you know, what the more of us who succeed is the more collectively we can move forward, you know. And uh um and that the more and more value is placed on this never-ending conversation about diversifying the economy. It's like if you have real life examples of that that are happening, not anecdotally, um, then how can you ignore it? Right. But the money talks, right? So I think it's it's that. And then again, back to the thing about impact. It's like I know the more commercially successful I am, is the more impact I will have. That's like job creation, that's access to forex, that's creating more um sustainable livelihoods. At the end of the day, that has always been uh, but not always, but in my adult life has become a very important thing to me. That's why I started school, you know. Um, and so but I have learned over the years that like I have to I have to be in control of what that looks like. And it can't always be at the heast of NGO funding and things that I'm not in control of. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Corie 1:27:40

It's like the assignment, right? The NGO versus the social enterprise. Let's not pretend, you know, like Yeah, the best way to be sustainable is to be profitable. Jovis one was talking about that here when we came recently. Yes, it's important. One more thing, David, one more thing I'll give.

Five And Thrive And Farewell

Corie 1:27:53

Five and thrive. That's it. What is that? I don't understand. Fibing and thriving.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:58

Um Well, that's the series that I started where I create these communities around technology and fashion education, learning how to vibe code for all purposes, not just for fashion. And it has also been a dovetail to the audience of clients who buy my clothes. So both internal and in Barbados, it's a workshop around vibe coding, but it's also a shopping event. So I've had the benefit of working again with the IDB to grow this series and expose my line and reintroduce my brand, I guess, the most serious version to the territories that I already have a fan base. So the English-speaking Caribbean. And then ideally sort of branch out, you know, because I think the con the cross-action of creativity and technology is an ever-growing interest and being able to impart knowledge in that space. And I think also edu event education, event-based education is a segment that has evolved as well, like podcasts. Of course, of course, of course. Event entertainment and education being conjoined. Yeah, it makes sense.

Corie 1:29:06

It makes sense. I mean it's great storytellers and those are people, so it works, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:09

Yeah, and I think I for whatever reason, like I just have a hard time just selling clothes. I just I have to get over it. But like I love I love the idea of integrating the multiplicities of who I am, and um, and I love the experience of like the last one in Barbidas. There was a young designer who just graduated from SCAD, which is a very good school in Savannah. And she just came up to me and she's like, you know, I just feel now I feel like I can use the technology. I just, you know, there's a lot of fear around that. And at the end of the day, it it's a programmer really around empowerment, and particularly for women, like having the audacity to own your destiny. And like all this sounds so like cliched, but you know what's it? Um but using it using very practical tools. And to your point earlier, it's like either you embrace the AI or you you know you get left behind, and I it's it's all of that tied into one. Um, but it's my parallel journey of reintroducing my clothing line to the Caribbean and Caribbean diaspora markets that I already have a solid fan base in, but haven't been selling to for a while. They're a very important segment of my target markets, but simultaneously entering the European market with a higher uh sort of different quality type products that um not to say that either has different quality, but just a different approach.

Corie 1:30:31

Yeah, different focus, different target audience. Yes. But keep us in mind when you're doing those things because I'm very interested in it. I admire the fact that you keep us in mind, as I said, when you're doing these things, because you can run a business and those study nobody, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:42

I mean, like David.

Corie 1:30:43

Some people say thank you very much, Anya. This was a pleasure. You do all right, David.