The Naval Dockyard in Port Royal came alive on Saturday evening (December 3) for the fourth staging of the premier Caribbean children’s fashion show, Island Child Style, which featured children’s collections from local, regional and international designers.

Among the designers were three child designers: seven-year-old Logan Watkins from Kingston, Jamaica, 14-year-old Lian White from Florida and nine-year-old, Blessed from Jamaica.

Speaking with Our Today, Blessed, the designer of the Blessed Collection, said: “I feel really good because I get to showcase my designs and make it more famous.”

Children’s Advocate Diahann Gordon Harrison, who was also in attendance, said: “This event speaks about empowering our children to be comfortable in their own skin. That’s very good because once you have children who understand their self-worth and their value, it means that they are confident, [and] they won’t do things that are negative to pull attention to themselves.”

“When we look at [the] statistics of what’s happening with kids, its children who are not confident, who are looking for self-validation externally and who are just trying to pull attention to self who really have most of the problems. So, this a creative way of getting the message without it being a do this, do that approach” she also said.

The Office of the Children’s Advocate was also a sponsor for the ‘Lotus Collection’ by Lian White.

Harrison said: “She is 14 and the COVID-19 pandemic took a toll on her. Just in terms of online school and really going through a lot of the struggles that teenagers struggle with at the time period. It was during the pandemic that she honed in on this creative side.”

She also noted that the Lotus Collection consists of garments that have been upcycled and reused to minimise waste and protect the environment.

Island Child Style is the brainchild of Michelle Gordon, chief executive officer of B3 Parenting, in collaboration with Brandon Ferguson, runway coach, and Norma Williams, human performance and branding facilitator.

“At its core, Island Child Style is about building confidence in children. We work with them over a period of 12 weeks. A lot of them come to us very shy, very timid and it’s not just about walking on the runway, we teach them certain etiquette, how to present themselves in a room, how to speak to people and to just believe in themselves, love themselves. That’s what it is about at its very core” Gordon told Our Today.

She stressed that the fashion aspect of Island Child Style is secondary, and that the aim is to have children become more confident and secure in themselves and able to function as amazing adults.

The children’s runway event featured 123 child models, with the youngest being three years old and the eldest just 17.

It also featured collections from Ziggy Marley & Appaman,’The Crown That I Wear’ by Kamille Jackson, ‘Club Couture’ by Shanice Wright, Zuri Izabelle by Latoya Hylton, among others.

Island Child Style, started in 2016, is the first child fashion show in the Caribbean that comprises of confidence-building activities, runway coaching and etiquette instruction.

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