Saint Lucia Jazz Festival’s Controversial Couture · Global Voices
Matthew Hunte

This year, the revamped Saint Lucia Jazz and Arts Festival featured a fashion show dubbed “Hot Couture”, intended to boost the island's burgeoning fashion industry by creating a showcase for local models and for designers both in Saint Lucia and throughout the region.
The show's artistic director was Vincent McDoom, a Saint Lucian designer and television presenter currently based in France – and while the event has generally received positive feedback, it has also been controversial, thanks in part to behind the scenes wrangling.
Designer Joycie Mederick, who had voiced concerns early on, felt that the event needed closer examination:
The controversial Fashion Show Hot Couture has brought to light a number of issues and personalities. There are a number of questions to be asked. Have any of you seen the Hot Couture Magazine under St. Lucia Fashion Pioneers? The information contained is endorsed by the Government of St. Lucia/ SLTB in support of the development of the Arts. Please find a copy and tell me what you think?
Was Hot Couture really to promote St. Lucia or St. Lucian Talent or was it staged to help some friends and to save a publication house? One that has done nothing to promote the works of the very industry or sector it is now claiming and making a bid for?  If there was no money for the Arts would the same players be interested in making an investment in the industry?  And why is there a need to wipe out and discount the efforts and achievements of others in the fashion industry?
Tennyson Scott felt that the post mortem should have been held after the entire festival was over:
My only disappointment is that the St. Lucia Jazz has not concluded and we have all of this outplay in the media. Why could it not wait until after the event when there is specific meeting when there is an evaluation. This in my view is how professionals operate. Issues like whether a foreign or local designer should open and close the show, or the design of the catwalk etc are things that should be discussed at the evalaution meeting. Remember this aspect is a new addition and we won't get everything right one time. But it is from the mistakes that are made and the recommendations…implemented [that] the event gets better and more meaningful.
Magdalene Daniel was happy that the fashion show brought something new to the Jazz festival:
Wendy Pilgrim-Michael felt that McDoom was justified in airing whatever problems he had with organizing the event:
Vincent is a professional and in that same vein would like to see the industry that he's passionate about succeed in the country of his birth, the country he loves; to afford other young people the opportunity that he was afforded. The country cannot be held hostage to the incompetencies and deficiencies of certain individuals….by calling on members of this forum in your post, you make it seem like before THEIR tourist board came in everything ran smoothly.
According to Jason Sifflet at The Flogg Blog, there was conflict on the organizing committee:
Vincent McDoom spoke about his experiences directing the show on his personal Facebook page:
This was a lovely opportunity and a fabulous learning experience for me as well as a slap in the face eye opener… My grandma taught me that it's in sleeping in a chicken pen you realize that chicken snores and this experience proved she was right in many ways…. After working closely with the models and designers the real talents who really should be applauded for their tried hard work and dedication I have come to realize that the designers suffer just as much as the models from various forms of abuse.
Yet, he promised to never stop his advocacy of the creative talent in Saint Lucia:
I will also continue to voice my observations and opinions on the ills of our creative talents both in the press locally and internationally and on the social network so as to create more awareness as to what the are truly confronted with and to stop those who trie[d] to exploit this talent with smooth talking in the media when in truth they could not care less and it's just to promote their faces and their egos at the expense of our models and our creative designers