Robert Young is an artist and designer from the Caribbean island republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Since founding The Cloth, a lifestyle and fashion design company, in 1986, Robert has used clothing as his medium, capturing social landscapes and emotions drawn from his Afro-Caribbean upbringing, and working in communities to dress and empower the troupes and personalities that make it their life’s work to represent us.
Robert’s practice is rooted in the working class and Caribbean memory, reaching back to historical places of resistance and attempting to transmute that energy into the consciousness of the now. He applies the same principles to his practice as a designer and bandleader in the annual Trinidad and Tobago Carnival. Robert is long-known for his band, A Vulgar Fraction, conceptualising and designing yearly roving performance art which finds the light on the streets of Port-of-Spain during the Carnival ritual. Robert’s process is pedagogical, encouraging performers to engage with and connect to the underbed of ideas through working with their hands and making the mas, reclaiming creativity as a central part of what it means to exist as their present self. Robert provides the framework, foundation, guidance and material for the costumes, with the encouragement and agency to have the costumes be built from the vantage point of each participant’s personal relating, making the mas, the art, the wearer’s very own. His practice is also interrogative and each year, through panel discussions and active outreach, he brings together experts, elders and the wider community to dig more deeply into the thematic grounding of that year’s band.