The Caribbean Export Development Agency (Caribbean Export) is pleased to announce that following the recent call for designers, seven designers have been selected to be supported to attend Dominicana Moda (DM2013) in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on October 21-26, 2013.

The seven fashion design firms are; ILashan Apparel & Handmade Jewelry from The Bahamas; the Andrew Harris Collection of Barbados; Odanis Valdez Polonia from the Dominican Republic; MARSAE of Guyana; Mag Art from Haiti; Patwa Apparel Ltd from Jamaica and MEILING Inc. from Trinidad & Tobago.

The selection panel included the Artistic Director of Salon de la Fama SRL; Mr. Socrates Mckinney, the Deputy Director of Escuela Chavon (affiliated with Parsons School of Design), Mr. Adolfo Lucero and Mrs. Ileana Tejada from Caribbean Export. The team reviewed 27 applications from across the region and scored them based on criteria such as completeness of application, availability of collections that will be showcased, experience and potentiality to export their talent in an international level.

In the past 8 years, Dominicana Moda has grown to be the official Fashion Week of the Dominican Republic thus the most important platform for the Fashion Industry. Throughout its history it has certainly become the fastest growing runway show in the Latin American region.

Caribbean Export is highly committed to the development of the Fashion sector in the Region and seeks to enable opportunities such as these to engage relevant stakeholders and foster sector-wide integration; as well as, to promote and strengthen ties in the fashion industry in the Caribbean, via cooperation among the great Caribbean designers and the textile industry in the Dominican Republic. This collaborative effort will provide a great opportunity for emerging and established fashion designers in the Caribbean to expose their vision at a regional and international stage, thus positioning the Caribbean as an international go-to location for Fashion design and ingenuity.