Woman power

All things considered, she could easily be regarded as the mother of costume designing in Barbados – even if she’s too humble to admit it.  Talking to Marcia Chandler during the week about Kadooment days of yore revealed more than her memoirs of the Crop-Over Festival as one of the first women to enter the arena.Her involvement, oft-times controversial, was instrumental in building the design platform of a uniquely Barbadian costume experience when the festival had been just resurrected in the 1970s.Symbolically, Chandler’s debut in Grand Kadooment 1979 was closely linked to her maternal role. Already she had a background in hairdressing, fashion designing and being a boutique owner when she “birthed” the idea. “I was pregnant with my daughter Katrina in 1978. All my friends went off to “jump up” and I was stuck at home itching to go. They all came home afterwards, including my then husband, and said what a great time they had all had,” she recalled laughing.  She had also been an avid follower of Trinidad Carnival and had for years worked with the legendary Wayne Berkeley in his mas’ camp, assisting in the costume-making process. With desire and aptitude in tow, the strong-willed entrepreneur decided that day she was going “to do her own thing”, and brought her first band Sugar We Ting the following year. It was a resounding success, she said, adding cheekily: “That year it was pretty big for a big band of the time with about 300 to 400 people – and nearly all white people,” she joked. This was even before the band traditionally associated with Anglo-Saxon Barbadian Whites, Blue Box Cart, emerged onto the scene. Back then costume designing, making and putting out a band were complex processes, but not as dear as it is today.“We didn’t need a whole heap of money to put out a band; I certainly didn’t have it to start out,” she added, remembering she was accompanied by a small team who helped her at the band house in Hastings from as early as April when the registration monies for the band started coming in.  With no real sponsorship to rely on, as soon as revellers paid their deposit she would buy the material and start putting together the costumes with her team.“At the band house we had a real family-type atmosphere. We would all come together, and some of the men would play dominoes and buy drinks at the little bar we set up at the house.  “In every room there were sheets of plywood set up on drums and they were work stations.  People would come and help; we didn’t have any money to pay anyone,” she said.  In essence, she said, this type of atmosphere constituted band fêtes/limes of the era where music was played and band members came together and made merry before the big day of Grand Kadooment.The racial segregation in the society between Blacks and Whites inadvertently was also an inspiration for Chandler, now 70, to get involved in the Crop-Over Festival.“I was also always complaining that ‘my people’ – of my colour – didn’t participate in anything with other locals. I always said that that would not be my experience, and I would get involved until I could no longer do it,” she added.After that came the bands Oasis In The Sea in 1980, Hotelorama 1981, Superheroes Gone Bajan 1982, Fun and Fury 1983 – and that was it for her and Crop-Over for five years.“I called it quits . . . vexed with what I thought were efforts to undermine my efforts in that last year,” Chandler recalled.Leaving the scene allowed entrance by other bands, the members of whom would have been with Chandler in her heyday, namely Cranston Browne’s and the Blue Box Cart. The latter still functions today and has developed its own niche market.Five years later her love for costumes and revelling overcame the differences she had with the bureaucracy, and she re-emerged with Top Mode Faces in 1988, which was followed by her signature masquerade in 1989, Wind Force, after which the Mighty Gabby penned his popular calypso for the season.Moving overseas in the early 1990s became too much of a strain for her to continue bringing the band and so she officially retired in 1995 with Colly Mas’, a tribute the late Frank Collymore, until she approached Baje International to design for them in 1999, the year they brought their first costume band. She stayed with them for a few years before retiring completely from masquerade.She remarked on the differences in the current trend of costume bands versus what it was like in the early years.“Back then I took personal loans from friends . . . to get the bands on the road. Now it’s so commercial, with everyone looking at making a killing from the bands. My costumes were between $90 and $150, and even then people were complaining how expensive they were,” she said. But she noted that even back then, without the easy availability of the materials which costume bands have access to now – the beads, jewels, feathers, brocades and the like – the costumes were beautiful and original in their own way.“I would have loved to have the materials the bandleaders and designers have today. I would have done such creative things with them,” she added, wondering what it was now the judges were looking for when the bands crossed the stage at National Stadium on Grand Kadooment.“All the costumes look alike. There really isn’t any need to have sections any more. In fact, it’s become so boring, except for a few who are still trying, that I don’t bother to pay attention any more.  “It depresses me what it has become,” Chandler said, bemoaning the dropping of the Kings And Queens this year.Chandler hopes to pass the baton to daughter Katrina who has expressed interest in bringing a band next Crop-Over – with her mother’s guidance.