Tribe Nine brings style to downtown

Joining the fight to rehabilitate the capital city, Tribe Nine Studios has moved its atelier to downtown Kingston.

At the launch of the new space, founder and creative director of the local fashion house, Troy-Oraine Williamson, told The Sunday Gleaner that when the search began for a new home, he felt the pull to move closer to his roots.

“Growing up in Denham Town, it just made it easy for me to make this decision to move back downtown. I was in Kingston Gardens before, shared the space with two other designers, and then I went back uptown for people to have access and then I was like, ‘You know what? I want to be in a space that makes that creativity [flow] and actualises Tribe Nine into what it’s supposed to be’.”

He said while he was always confident in the decision to move, he spent a long time suffering fools who scrunched up their noses at downtown.

“I think that’s why it took me so long to move down here, because I was just thinking about other people. I was thinking about access like what would people think about this moving downtown thing and then I said, ‘You know what? I think downtown is actually where creativity lives to me and that’s usually the case in every other city. So why are we not utilising our downtown space?’ So it made sense for me to be ahead of the grain a little bit. Kind of just move down here and have people traverse down here. Let’s just figure out what that stigma is and kind of go around it or just face it head on.”

He continued, “I am obviously aware of what is going on down here and aware of all the stigma that is attached to here but also it’s like, ‘I know how I feel down here. I am more of a Jamaican down here, I feel more connected to my people down here’, so it just made sense.”

Now housed in the F&B Building on Harbour Street, Williamson says being in the country’s creative capital will help him expand his Tribes’ outreach capacity.

“I feel like being in the centre of the art district is the most important thing. I walk out and I hear the sirens, I hear the bustling of people, I see corporate and I see creatives in one space just walking down the street.”

In addition to constructing all off his pieces in the space, he is aiming to provide workshops for both children and other designers, to better equip the industry.

“I think also, being down here and being so close to where I was born and where I grew up, I feel like I wanted a space that spoke to the younger generation for them to understand that there is another thing to choose. You don’t have to be a doctor, you don’t have to be a lawyer, there are designers that are out here and are working.”

“I wanna do workshops with the kids and make them see exactly how these things come about and how garment construction happens. Pattern cutting workshops, construction workshops, everything. I wanna do that in the space and I feel like we have the space now to kind of evolve what Tribe Nine actually is and it’s kind of just about people really.”

Christening the new space, Williamson launched a capsule collection titled Seven Miles.

“I think my idea for this capsule collection is actually the heatwave that’s happening right now. It was literally on a whim, I felt like I wanted to introduce people to the space but also be in my brain a little bit to also see the diverseness of what’s happening.” He continued, “I wanted a lot of fluidity and I wanted a softness with the harshness of downtown, so there’s that kind of juxtaposition. So that’s why all the pieces are very fluid. They are very strong colours but not in your face, it kind of just flows and it is inspired by Negril. It just gives you that effortless glide. That’s what I wanted to portray with that collection.”

Putting the 10-piece collection together in less than two weeks, Williamson says he is most excited about the growth that the new location will afford him.

“I am just elated about what’s about to happen. I have all these things going on in my brain that I wanna do in the space. I really wanna do some workshops with designers to teach them how to edit a collection, to learn how to represent yourself marketing wise. I think I have a lot of things I have acquired over the years, in terms of knowledge and just working in different environments. So kind of just sitting down and just [regurgitating] all that information to people always gets me excited. So this space will just show me who I have become as a man, as well as a designer. We are gonna open the space in a big way, so I’m excited about that.”

shanel.lemmie@gleanerjm.com