A model in Genesis Swimwear at StyleWeek 2019 held at the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Port-of-Spain. Photo: Nigel Reid.

The pho­tographs were tak­en dur­ing a fash­ion show which took place at the main church of the An­gli­can dio­cese in T&T on Sat­ur­day night as part of Style Week, Port-of-Spain.

Flags ad­ver­tis­ing the event’s main spon­sor, the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB), were al­so dis­played on the church’s fence.

De­spite the on­line back­lash, how­ev­er, an­oth­er Style Week run­way show was held at the Cathe­dral last night which in­clud­ed on­line swimwear bou­tique, Gen­e­sis Swim.

El­lis Brig­gs, chair­man of Zetick Caribbean Lim­it­ed, the or­gan­is­er of Style Week, told Guardian Me­dia those hav­ing an is­sue with the fash­ion show at the church were just be­ing “hy­per­sen­si­tive”.

“There is a lot of talk about a pho­to of a mod­el in a bathing suit. I didn’t re­alise that the hu­man body was some­thing to be ashamed of. I didn’t re­alise that we as hu­man be­ings were born with clothes. I think peo­ple are just hy­per­sen­si­tive,” Brig­gs said.

“This is the era we live in. We live in this era where you put some­thing on the in­ter­net and it goes vi­ral and it be­comes a big con­tro­ver­sy and that’s that. No­body re­al­ly cares about the fash­ion de­sign­ers who are strug­gling or the mod­els who are get­ting an av­enue to show­case their tal­ents. No­body cares about that what they care about is just this lit­tle sen­sa­tion for the mo­ment. In a cou­ple of weeks they will for­get about that,” he said.

Zetick Caribbean Lim­it­ed’s Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Shun­nel Roopc­hand com­mend­ed the An­gli­can church for be­ing “for­ward-think­ing and very progress by al­low­ing the show to take place there.

“Style Week is about high­light­ing tal­ents that are giv­en to us by God, cre­ative tal­ents and that was the po­si­tion of the church as well,” Roopc­hand said.

Roopc­hand said a por­tion of the pro­ceeds from the show will go the church to aid in their restora­tion works, “Our agree­ment with the church is dual pur­posed. While they are very, very hap­py to ac­com­mo­date us, we would al­so be as­sist­ing in their restora­tion,” she said.

Last Au­gust, the Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral sus­tained struc­tur­al dam­age as a re­sult of a mas­sive earth­quake that hit Port-of-Spain. Roopc­hand said funds re­quired for this restora­tion has been val­ued at $5 mil­lion.

“So hope­ful­ly we can get peo­ple per­haps in­ter­est­ed—maybe some of those same peo­ple on so­cial me­dia—to come in and chip in some­thing to help the restora­tion ef­forts of the church,” Brig­gs said.

Brig­gs said Style Week did not start a trend by hold­ing a fash­ion show in a church, “This is noth­ing new. We didn’t set any trend. This has gone on in­ter­na­tion­al­ly al­ready,” he said.