Designers create vivid, elaborate costumes for West Indian Day parade
EAST FLATBUSH, Brooklyn (PIX11) — The annual West Indian American Day Carnival is less than two weeks away and a Brooklyn designer and her team are helping to bring this year’s celebration to life — crafting handmade costumes as part of the Sesame Flyers mas camp.
In a quiet showroom at the Sesame Flyers International mas camp, the spirit of Caribbean culture is coming together stitch by stitch with each intricate design telling its own story.
“We have a theme this year,” said head designer Tracey Clarke. “The Renaissance. The Carnival Renaissance and every year we build the costumes around a theme and what it means to the culture is unity. Coming together as one.”
Clarke has been hand-crafting elaborate carnival costumes for more than a decade and pouring her creativity into each piece.
Mas camps are the heartbeat of Caribbean carnival where communities come together to build not just costumes, but a shared sense of purpose and pride — preserving their culture and keeping traditions alive.
Khris Wolfe, 13, is making his mark on this year’s carnival as a junior designer. He fell in love with the carnival at a young age and got the chance to create his very first male costume that will soon dazzle the crowds on Eastern Parkway this Labor Day.
“Miss Tracey actually taught me how to make my own appliques so that’s what these are,” Wolfe said. “I just basically ran the same appliques throughout the costume, adding different things and pieces to make it more different.”
This year as the parade winds through Brooklyn, the legacy of the Sesame Flyers mas camp will be on full display — bringing the energy and spirit of the Caribbean to life in one of the city’s most beloved celebrations.
PIX11 News is the proud broadcast partner of the West Indian American Day Carnival parade, which will be held on Monday, Sept. 2, 2024. You can watch the celebrations live on PIX11, PIX11.com, and PIX11+.
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