Brooklyn-based fashion designer, Roger Gary’s new collection was featured at the august El Museo del Barrio Museum in Spanish Harlem, where the couturier won the Young Designer Award, presented by founder of Latinista Fashion Week Dee Rivera and fashion designer Cesar Galindo.
The Jan. 30 launch of Latinista Fashion Week showcased two pieces of Gary’s Sport of Kings colorful horse racing outfits, cut from silk and designed with long sleeves.
One piece showed a coloration of chicken yellow with mauve polka dots and pink stripes and a zipped up front, while the other silk shirt was created in a colorful blend of orange, purple and green, and completed with a collar.
Models Taj and Alex matched the outfits with white stirrup pants and riding boots.
The award-winning designer’s inspiration came from his love of horse racing while growing up in Guyana.
“When I was a kid, I dreamed of being a jockey and I enjoyed ridding horses at D’Urban Park in Georgetown,” said Gary, who also admired the colorful silk shirts that the jockeys wore.
“I am fascinated with the outfits,” he said, adding that this collection is a tribute to horse racing biggest events. The Kentucky Derby, the Belmont Stakes, the Preakness Steaks, and the memorable D’Urban Park, where he spent time watching the races and being a part of the excitement.
Gary who has designed for beauty pageant contestants such as Miss Guyana World, Miss Guyana Earth and Miss Guyana Universe, to name a few, explained that this collection is an extension of his resort line of colorful swimwear.
The 25-piece collection is geared to the adventurous woman who Gary says is not a wallflower, but someone who wants to be noticed.
The women’s wear designer that was featured on Black Entertainment Television (BET), Rip The Runway and VH1, is hoping to attract women to this collection, who are happy in their skin, and who wants to feel good, and celebrates life. “I say yes wear it.”
Gary who was featured in Woman’s Wear Daily, NY Daily News, Caribbean Life, Essence Magazine, Unchain Magazine, British Pride, She Caribbean and others, said that his fashion philosophy encompasses the totality of being a woman – the clothes and the woman become one.
His pieces have lit up the runways of New York Fashion Week, Brooklyn Fashion Weekend, Caribbean Fashion Week, as well Style Week Jamaica, Barbados Fashion Week and St. Kitts Fashion Week.
The U.S. Virgin Islands Fashion Week, and many others have hosted Gary’s masterful collections. He is set for Summer Sizzle 2015 in British Virgin Islands, for the seventh time, and where Taraji P. Hanson, academy award nominee, and star of the new hit show “Empire” – will play host.
