AROUND JA WITH PAUL H Fashion turns heads at Jamaica Rum Fest

The 2020 Jamaica Rum Festival, which took place on the grounds of Hope Gardens on Saturday, February 29 and Sunday, March 1, was a bumper affair.

Two days of a packed venue it was, and to me it was bigger than the first staging last year.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself over the two days even though I was working. From the booths selling some exquisite locally made items, the variety of food, the eclectic music, the samplings, and, of course, the liquors, more so the rum, there was so much to see and taste, so much to turn patrons’ heads.

The kaleidoscope of the Jamaica people was out in all its colourfulness, and many went to display their fashion sense. But, a festival such as this can really cause some people to go into fashion overdrive and you cannot help noticing them, even if you don’t care.

And I really do not care about what people wear. It is their call. However, the storyteller/writer in me has no boundaries when it sees things that are really out of the box, and Rum Fest 2020 had some people jumping way out of the box. They could not be contained.

Like the tall, dark, skinny young man wearing boots. He had a black piece of leather tied around his neck as if it were a leash. He was walking very fast, as if he were running away from his owner. Another young man, with a French Christian name and a Chinese surname, donned Russian-style trousers and boots that belie his youth.

At one point I started to concoct a short story based on the tall, full-bodied woman who went around in a short, purple, satin ‘nightie’. I wondered whether she had woken up and headed straight to the festival, or she was going to sleep over in the gardens after the show. In the story, I wrote about how she got into Hope Gardens in her nightie, and what happened after the show. The power of imagination.

While talking to a friend, I saw a young woman in a leopard-print pants and a white brassiere-looking wrap for a blouse. I went over and introduced myself. She laughed and shouted, “Sir!”

In my embarrassment, I laughed and I embraced my former student of two years ago whom I did not recognise. That one called for a little rum, so I went in search of a sample as soon as I snapped her and an associate she had not seen for a while.

The brands were not outdone in the ways in which they dressed their ‘ambassadors’. Some of these young people left nothing to the imagination, while other kept it subdued. The young man in the black, green and gold Wray and Nephew pilot-influenced attire took branding to another level – way, way into the skies.

While the paloozas were a hit with the women, the cross earrings were on the list of things to wear for the men. The crosses were dangling all over the place while the spirits flowed. The juxtaposition was so stark that I asked myself, “Where is Jesus in all of this, in this the season of Lent?”

And whoever resurrected the paloozas is a winner, for those loose-fitting get-ups that went to the fashion graveyard decades ago were up and walking, especially the striped ones made in China.

While I was staring at an outstanding pair of shoes, the wearer said, “No picha.” But when I told her I wasn’t interested in her white rompers, she gave permission for the red, white and blue platforms to be taken.

The 2020 Rum Fest was indeed a fashion parade, the epicentre of which was the area where there was a backdrop on either side of a mounted walkway. There, thousands of pictures, perhaps, were taken as patrons show off what they were ­wearing. Suddenly, everybody was a model, and the smiles on their faces betrayed their happiness. I cannot recall ­another event where I have had seen so many happy faces.

On day one, rain, which started early in the ­morning threatened to dilute the strengths of the occasion, and halt the fashion parade. But, rain or shine, the ‘runways’ were happening. And it wasn’t the rums alone that caused some heads to turn. What some people wore had others spinning about the place.