ROBERT YOUNG Man of The Cloth
exist in a new space. Finding key people who commit to the source and the resource like Mark Eastman, our assistant designer who has been working with me since 2012; anthropologist Sophie Bufton who thought it was important to tell the stories; Mervyn Gonzales; Betty-ann Khan,
Sean Williams and Reuben Gonzales. I would still like to add a female designer to the project, trained or untrained.
TC: Those must feel like sweeping changes in what you’ve probably considered a “one-man show” for a very long time. How have you been able to qualify the worth of that brand overhaul?
RY: You can see it. The shop in Belmont feels different now. For example, when I moved, I kept collecting pieces for décor for my new space — like 20 ft x 10 ft x
3 ft fishing nets that you’d use to catch crayfish, to use as partitions. We eventually moved away from that idea and used other items I had been collecting. Concept by me, collection by me, objects by me and it was designed and executed by Lori Antoinette and her team. It’s hard to conceptualise a beautiful thing like that to get it from idea to completion, but part of my growth now has been to allow people into the space to think and work in the shop. And that’s a good place for me to be now. TC: That’s a telling sign of growth for any designer. Tell us about the “CLEAN SLATE” collection that made its debut in 2019, because that debut seemed to be the culmination of all that work.
RY: CLEAN SLATE is a collection of classic pieces that would have been created before with a short ecofootprint. The name actually came out of Trinidad Carnival: we wanted to create a collection and reinvent a space for women to create their magic. I consider it to be “spirit clothes” — things that could cocoon you and provide a home space in your body to do what you have to do. We designed about 70 pieces, did the photoshoot that was styled by Keziah Lendor
and then created the lookbook. People were so surprised that the offerings were so blank, but it also informed me as a designer and us as a team on what people were looking for.
TC: Let’s talk about COVID-19. Have any major plans been disrupted for The Cloth?
RY: Yes. We were looking at participating in an event Festival in St Lucia, the Essence Festival, returning for a pop-up in New Orleans, and we may have had a shop presence in Barbados by now. So those things were affected. Before we would have been producing all over the place — that no longer happens. The choice of fabric has been informing our collections, so for example, the “Project Blue” collection is handpainted fabric. It’s almost like obeah, the way people have been drawn to that collection — and until recently, most of the photos that we have are of customers in their pieces. We’ve had to be resourceful during these times.
TC: And the word of the moment in the industry seems to be “pivot”. How have you been able to pivot during the course of the pandemic?
RY: I’m still spinning from the pandemic! All of us are still spinning; we’re reacting to something that we cannot understand. I don’t think we have understood this yet… this is not only life-shifting, but it can also be life-ending. Anyone of us can go. It demands a collective approach to the reality that we are a community connected to each other. And when I say “we”, [award-winning author] Dionne Brand refers to “we” as black and brown people. Last month, she gave a lecture at York University called “What We Saw, What We Made, When We Emerge”. And what we saw was the racism, the injustices, the division, the inequities. We saw how people who are not treated well at their jobs are considered essential, while trying to make them feel important so that our lives can continue in some kind of regular comfort. I tell people that, right now I’m pretending that I have a business. People have gotten tired and are seeking comfort in the face of precautions. Comfort, comfort, comfort, comfort, comfort.
TC: Outside of comfort, are there any particular shopping or consumer patterns that you are noticing among your customers, whether female or male?
RY: It has to be functional; it has to have pockets. Outside of that, it has to be beautiful, and people have to feel good seeing that while feeling good wearing it. The “good” can’t be sexy or status anymore; the good can’t be that.
TC: About your intentional use of sustainable materials in your designs, it seems that this long-standing ethos of The Cloth as a brand has found new life in the ways that it now fit into people’s overall daily living. How has incorporating natural, sustainable fibres into your collection helped with that style expression?
RY: We always used cotton, and we always had the word “restoration” in our mantra and mandate since about 1996 — referencing the restoring of our relationship with the environment, better living things and people. So that was always something that we wanted to do.
And I got reminded by visiting India a few years ago and seeing completely organic, handmade materials — where garments take three months to make because it goes to various towns, villages and cities for different stages of production. The current