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Credits
Photos by Gabriella Wyke
Co-Creative Direction + Styling by Keziah Lendor
Makeup by Melonie Mollineau
Studio – Affordable Imports
It is a hazy October afternoon when I arrive on set. The not-so-tiny El Socorro studio is thrumming with activity; and with good reason: there’s a lot of talent in the room. With very little notice, London-based designer Melissa Simon-Hartman revealed she would be in Trinidad – her mother’s homeland – with pieces from her latest collection, Masquerade. A few moments later, Anya Ayoung Chee is seated in the makeup chair having faux flowers woven into her pigtails, and I’m wining my way into a massive crinoline skirt. We now have exactly 5 hours to memorialize the cultural-bricolage of this moment.
From Simon-Hartman, the collection itself is an offering that so brilliantly yokes her Ghanaian and Trini heritage. Inspired by the fancy dress worn during the Ankos Festival, celebrated by the people of Takoradi and Winneba, Ghana, Masquerade is an intelligent tutorial on not just Ghana’s history, but its sartorial culture. The fabric – produced in Ghana by Michael Essuman, known for his incredible work with the Ohyewaakomem masquerading club – is a patchwork of delight, with curiously layered and pointy elements, exuberant pleats, and meandering trim; which Simon-Hartman, then fashioned into broad-shouldered shirt dresses, ruffle-hemmed trousers, cropped jackets with voluminous sleeves, and waist-cinching corsets.
Connecting the cultural dots in an Instagram post, Simon-Hartman says: “Every year in Ghana, the grand Fancy Dress Festival heralds the start of the new year. My fascination with its stunning costumes began a few years ago when a friend residing there sent captivating photos of her and her lovely family taking part in this celebration.”
When it comes to Ms. Ayoung Chee, it’s always interesting to see someone redefine themselves in real-time; and Anya is a living, breathing masterclass in ‘becoming’. Watching her carve out her own impactful niche — beyond the world of Project Runway, beyond that first collection, beyond Miss T&T and all the things and moments and stories we tell ourselves — it’s easy to see how, with her ever-expanding ambitions, Anya is (very) busy just walking the talk. From social impact programmes to designer collaborations, every move is intentional and every move is meaningful. Her life is a daring but tasteful jumble of motherhood, marriage, meetings, and her métier. Now, at 42, she is decidedly a Social Innovator; but she has always been an integral part of the Caribbean’s cultural kaleidoscope – cofounding platforms to connect makers to marketplaces (Nudge Caribbean), and empowering women with skills training initiatives (Spöol).
Anya spends the afternoon quietly flitting about the set in between outfit changes; one minute she’s chatting about the history of Carnival, and the next minute she’s pirouetting for a photo before returning to the couch to tap-tap-tap away on her phone, checking in on a few of her hundreds of obligations. She has also been working with adidas’s S.E.E.D programme, to design a Carnival-inspired collection for the brand. It’s all very casual. And it is that essential contrast of who she is and who she used to be – all the many versions of Anya that have now blurred and fused, beautifully – that forms an interesting monument to her relationship between creativity and social impact.
In conversation, the word ‘authenticity’ makes a regular appearance, and by my observation it seems to come naturally, albeit guardedly at first, to these two. And while they are constantly becoming (I mean, we all are, right?), they are, at once, fully formed adults; businesswomen, creatives, mothers, seemingly unencumbered by their achievements or failures.
There’s a familiar warmth between them; a generous and giddy exchange of experiences, design favourites, and appreciation for the supernatural. Having both mastered the megaphones of their creativity, it is likely that this open-ended process of becoming, this daisy chain of self-invention and reinvention, this accumulative origin story, is what brought these two aesthetes together.