By: Staff Writer
October 8, 2021
A Trinidadian clothing designer is fighting through the COVID-19 pandemic as best she could, but making only custom made apparel is starting to take its toll on her.
Claudia Pegus, owner/operator of Claudia Pegus Couture, told Caribbean Magazine Plus that because of the COVID-19 pandemic she is “short staffed” because only vaccinated people are allowed to really move around in Trinidad.
She added: “But my people are coming back to work, it’s just the nature of the operations changed a bit, so things have gotten really hectic with me here.”
Claudia has a website and she utilises Facebook to showcase her designs, where she said: “We are using Facebook now because we are rebuilding the website”
The additional issue in Trinidad now is that people are not going anywhere because of the COVID-19 restrictions and that has put her in a position to rely more on “custom made wear than clothes off the rack.” As she put it: “Because of COVID, you have a lot more customer orders coming in that are specialised things that people want rather than off the rack, because normally we do two things. One it is the corporate people who can afford it because they still have their jobs and the private jobs tend to slow down your business because they occupy your machines.
“So when you can take your machines to fill your racks, you now have to take your machines to fill people’s orders, which is a whole different thing. So in order to do that you need more staff and to get more staff you need more vaccinated people. It’s a whole process.”
In Trinidad only 38 percent of the population is vaccinated according to the World Health Organisation, which is about 525,000 people for over 1m doses already given.
COVID-19 vaccination is not mandatory in Trinidad and Tobago, much like other Caribbean countries and the government has not indicated that intends to make COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for any age group.
Jaqueline Charles, owner/operator of Koko Karibi Designs, a jewellery and watch designer, added that she had to move back to operating out of her home because of the COVID-19 pandemic and this is causing her some stress.
She said: “I’ve had to move everything out of my workshop and I had to move my studio home, as soon as I moved to my home there’s a limitation on space and the type of work that I can do. So actually just yesterday morning I started clearing up a space to work so I could use my torches and so on.”
Being a jeweller is intricately difficult work that requires keen attention to detail that Ms Charles must have adequate space for, but despite having to downsize her operations, Jacky is planning a massive new line launch in November in the run up to the Christmas season.
She added: “I don’t want to go into details now because I have not completed the collection as yet, but as soon as it is one I will share it with the media.”