More Than Style: Jessel Brizan’s mission to transform Caribbean fashion

AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

Jes­sel Brizan’s fash­ion sto­ry didn’t be­gin on a flashy run­way or through an in­her­it­ed fam­i­ly lega­cy. It be­gan sim­ply, with a teenag­er flip­ping through GQ mag­a­zines with his friends in Di­a­mond Vale, Diego Mar­tin. The styles were sharp, the trends ‘on point’, and it was all more than enough to cap­ti­vate Jes­sel for a life­time.

Long be­fore Jes­sel be­came an out­spo­ken voice and au­thor on the busi­ness of fash­ion, he was sim­ply fas­ci­nat­ed by the art and shine of it all.

“A cou­ple of my class­mates and I, you’d see in terms of how we go dress for school. As far as the footwear, we could on­ly wear black shoes, but we try to have cer­tain styles of shoes and so on, you know, dur­ing the term,” Jes­sel told Guardian Me­dia.

“We were just look­ing at the ads, not so much read­ing the ar­ti­cles. But just look­ing at the ads,” he laughed.

He would con­stant­ly do il­lus­tra­tions, and it went far be­yond il­lus­trat­ing de­signs, but he had an idea for an ac­tu­al store­front he planned to have.

To turn those sketch­es in­to a re­al­i­ty, Jes­sel want­ed to fur­ther his ed­u­ca­tion. While his heart was set on New York’s Fash­ion In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (FIT), af­ter se­cur­ing a foot­ball schol­ar­ship with Amer­i­can In­ter­na­tion­al Col­lege, he opt­ed to at­tend the lat­ter to al­le­vi­ate any fi­nan­cial bur­den. The col­lege did not of­fer any arts pro­grammes, so he set­tled on a BA in Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. But he did not let that dim his cre­ative spark.

“I still want­ed a cre­ative out­let,” Jes­sel ex­plained.

“The first year, the school did their an­nu­al fash­ion show. I mod­elled in the fash­ion show, and then I start­ed work­ing in the school news­pa­per. And in my se­nior year, I took over the helm as ed­i­tor-in-chief, and that’s when I kind of in­tro­duced fash­ion in the school news­pa­per.”

Jes­sel went on to in­tern in New York at Fed­er­at­ed De­part­ment Stores (now Ma­cy’s Mer­chan­dis­ing Group) on three of their brands: Tashual­ba, Al­fani and Clu­b­room. He even­tu­al­ly pur­sued stud­ies at FIT, fo­cus­ing on menswear de­sign. Jes­sel soon re­alised it was time to leave the New York class­rooms and show­rooms and re­turn home to Trinidad.

In 2014, Jes­sel opened Blue Basin, a store at the Cruise Ship Com­plex in Port-of-Spain, which he says was less of a per­son­al fash­ion ven­ture and more of a plat­form for oth­er in­de­pen­dent Caribbean cre­atives.

“When I launched my store, that was the big thing. Be­cause it wasn’t just my brands. It was a plat­form for all dif­fer­ent de­sign­ers. That was well at­tend­ed; it was well re­ceived,” he said.

“It showed that it is pos­si­ble that even as an in­de­pen­dent de­sign­er, you don’t have to have mil­lions of dol­lars to ac­tu­al­ly launch a brand and be suc­cess­ful.”

But nav­i­gat­ing the re­gion­al land­scape al­so brought a dose of re­al­i­ty. Jes­sel ad­mits that while his views can be ‘con­tro­ver­sial’, he is can­did about the fact that the Caribbean re­gion lacks the in­fra­struc­ture and sys­tems need­ed to sus­tain a ful­ly de­vel­oped fash­ion in­dus­try.

“Ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly, we’re frag­ment­ed. And even if you look lo­cal­ly, we’re frag­ment­ed. So you have peo­ple op­er­at­ing in si­los. We have that ‘crab-in-a-bar­rel’ men­tal­i­ty, right, as op­posed to even com­ing to­geth­er and, you know, col­lab­o­rat­ing a lot. And that stems from dif­fer­ent fac­tors.”

Ac­cord­ing to Jes­sel, the chal­lenges go far be­yond cloth­ing. He point­ed to the lim­it­ed ac­cess to ma­te­ri­als, for­eign ex­change is­sues, weak sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tives and the high cost of en­ter­ing in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets. Jes­sel al­so be­lieves that many re­gion­al de­sign­ers fo­cus heav­i­ly on aes­thet­ics while ne­glect­ing the busi­ness side of fash­ion.

Jes­sel points to de­sign­ers of Caribbean her­itage such as Grace Wales Bon­ner, Mar­tine Rose and Max­i­m­il­ian Davis as ex­am­ples of cre­atives suc­cess­ful­ly merg­ing Caribbean sto­ry­telling and Car­ni­val in­flu­ences with Eu­ro­pean tai­lor­ing and mod­ern lux­u­ry fash­ion on the world stage. For Jes­sel, that fu­sion is pre­cise­ly where the fu­ture lies.

It is a per­spec­tive shaped by his il­lus­tri­ous ca­reer, which in­cludes win­ning the pres­ti­gious Chevening Schol­ar­ship to study for an MA in Fash­ion Busi­ness Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­min­ster in Lon­don.

And though Jes­sel shies away from la­belling him­self a fash­ion de­sign­er, he proud­ly en­cour­ages peo­ple to ex­press their own per­son­al style, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to men and the menswear mar­ket.

“I still do think the menswear mar­ket is un­der­served. By all means, if it’s some­thing that you’re tru­ly pas­sion­ate about, yes, I would en­cour­age more men to get in­to it.”

To­day, much of his fo­cus is on ed­u­ca­tion through writ­ing. His lat­est book, Sell­ing Fash­ion Col­lec­tions: Nav­i­gat­ing the Buy­ing Process as a Fash­ion En­tre­pre­neur, aims to help the next gen­er­a­tion of de­sign­ers and fash­ion en­thu­si­asts un­der­stand that it isn’t on­ly about art but al­so about strat­e­gy.

“It’s not just about de­signs and cre­at­ing pret­ty clothes. Fash­ion is way more than that. It’s an ac­tu­al busi­ness … be­cause of sus­tain­abil­i­ty, you’re look­ing at re­spon­si­ble de­sign, re­spon­si­ble sourc­ing in mar­ket­ing and mer­chan­dis­ing, sales and dis­tri­b­u­tion,” Jes­sel said.

“We have to make the fash­ion in­dus­try or the fash­ion field at­trac­tive to young peo­ple. There needs to be an ecosys­tem in place.”

Jes­sel firm­ly be­lieves that while T&T and the wider Caribbean pos­sess the raw cre­ativ­i­ty to com­pete glob­al­ly, by em­brac­ing long-term strat­e­gy, open col­lab­o­ra­tion and ro­bust busi­ness sys­tems, the re­gion’s fash­ion in­dus­try can tru­ly flour­ish.