Haitian designer Hassan Pierre in Vogue!

[caption id="attachment_2316" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Photo credit: Seth Browarnik/RED EYE PRODUCTIONS "][/caption]

We love to see island folk doing big things so we were very happy to read about Haitian-American designer Hassan Pierre...  in the May issue of US Vogue, no less! 

 While folks may not always associate Haiti with haute couture, Pierre, who is a 22 year old grad of Parson's School of Design, has fashion in his blood, as he told Boca News back in 07:


"My mother used to take me to the Paris shows from Haiti. She is what I like to call, a fashion junkie."


And it's worked for him -another of his lines, VIP Couture, was beloved by it girls such as Nicole Richie and the Olsen Twins and now his organic line, Way It Should Be* is getting shine.

 WISB* was featured in Vogue's Syle Ethics section, with actress Kerry Washington modelling a cool, crisp black and white WISB* dress with a tiered skirt. 

The name of the line aptly sums up its fashion ethos - that clothing should be from sustainable and organic sources. Hence why they use organic materials, non-synthetic dyes, recycled zippers and seeded paper for the hang tags (you can actually plant them and they will bloom). 

Also, the line itself is produced in Port-au-Prince and Pierre has promised it will continue to be, as the city recovers from the catastrophic January 12 earthquake. He told Vogue:


"It really has to be the entire process, beyond it just being organic. And that's more important now than ever."

 

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Model behaviour: Naomi for Haiti, Jeneil's nude cover & more

[caption id="attachment_1964" align="alignleft" width="250" caption="Photo credit: Vogue.co.uk"][/caption]

Islandista born and descended models have started 2010 as busy as they were in 2009.



The queen of them all, Brit-yaadie Naomi Campbell has been working hard at putting together her annual Fashion for Relief show, which will benefit Haiti this year.

She is teaming up with Sarah Brown, wife of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for the show which will take place during London Fashion Week.

Thus far, Naomi has brought on fashion friends Dolce & Gabbana, Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood for the event which takes place on February 18th.

She was out and about this week doing interviews and photo calls for the event.

Say what you want about Naomi (and yes, there is nuff to say) but her heart is as big as her temper. She has always worked hard for charity causes.

In more islandista model news, fellow Jamaican models Jeneil Williams and Jaunel McKenzie are going hard for 2010 - already. More on their blazing start to 2010 when you read on.

Jaunel worked like a beast the week before Christmas 09, jetting to New York, Paris and London to shoot editorials coming out this month for four major publications - British Marie Claire, French Glamour and American Cosmo and Red.

Whew! Talk about 'you better work!' The girl ent playing.

Two of the shoots were actually Caribbean collabos, with the Glamour editorial shot by Jamaican photog Walter Chin and the Cosmo one done by Haitian Marc Baptiste.

And Jeneil is taking it all off for the hotly anticipated cover of LOVE magazine, the edgy fashion pub from the Conde Nast stable. The picture is one of at least four cover shots that have been leaked with Lara Stone, Daria Werbowy and Kristen McMenamy covering others in the same pose - however, LOVE is fond of going with multiple covers.

Not to mention that folks at top model blog, models.com are going crazy over the pic and Jeneil's strong, sensual shot.

I read some saying that her pose was not giving off as much strength as her face but I disagree. I think the pose is strong and her expression is giving it a touch of vulnerability. That's just me.

It's a big cover though - love the 'Fashion Icons' stamp on it - go deh Jeneil!

[caption id="attachment_1965" align="aligncenter" width="405" caption="Photo credit: Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott for LOVE Magazine"][/caption]

And in a final islandista model tidbit, word in the blogosphere is that our girl Jourdan Dunn is set to make her comeback soon and will be doing it big.

According to The Imagist:

Jourdan Dunn lovers, unite in celebration...a mere few weeks after giving birth London's loveliest is back in the editorial mix BIG-time. Think Blue Chip Only Girl A + bookings back to back...

We can't wait! Bring on LFW!

 

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Island folk part of massive Hope for Haiti telethon

And I can't tell you how...  how moved I am that everybody cares. It means a lot because for so long, no one cared. For so long, no one knew us. And this really means a lot.

- Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon











[caption id="attachment_1937" align="aligncenter" width="405" caption="Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon (at right) on LKL, along with Ben Stiller (left) and Benicio Del Toro (center)."][/caption]

Those were the words from a tearful Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon earlier this week on Larry King Live, during a mini telethon which CNN held to raise funds to aid Haiti which was ripped apart by a huge earthquake on January 12th.

Islandistas, we have to tell you -  Garcelle's words really grabbed us - the emotion in her voice when she said "no one cared... no one knew us" was really moving. It made us think of the burden and conflicted emotions that her and other Haitians have to bear loving a country that can be so unremittingly sad.









[caption id="attachment_1938" align="aligncenter" width="405" caption="Distraught: Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon manning the phones at CNN's telethon. (Photo credit: CNN)"][/caption]

This is really what it had to come to for the world to look at Ayiti, to pay attention to the injustices that have been wrought upon it since they first declared independence in 1804.

But at least now they are looking.

And a huge cast of stars, including island folk in Wyclef Jean, Rihanna and Alicia Keys are getting together tomorrow night for what could be one of the biggest telethons of all time - the Hope for Haiti telethon, spearheaded by George Clooney and MTV Networks.



The telethon is going to be seen across just about every well-known network - MTV, VH1, ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN, BET, the CW, HBO, CMT, PBS, TNT, Showtime, Comedy Central, Bravo, E! Entertainment Network, National Geographic Channel, Oxygen, G4, Centric, Current TV, Fuse, MLB Network, Epix, Palladia, SoapNet, Style, Discovery Health and Planet Green, Canada's CTV, CBC Television, Global Television and MuchMusic.

It will also be aired on the international networks of certain channels, including BET International, CNN International, National Geographic and MTV Networks International.

Over HALF A BILLION homes world wide will see the telethon - estimates are that it will be available in 640 million homes.

Donations will go to Oxfam America, Partners in Health, Red Cross, UNICEF and Wyclef's Yele Haiti foundation, the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund and United Nations World Food Programme, with funds raised being split evenly between the organisations.

Islandistas, you know what you have to do tomorrow night. More than anyone else, we need to step up for Haiti because that is our Caribbean family. Rihanna, who will be performing from London for the show, put it well when discussing it on a Norwegian talk show today.

"In the Caribbean, we think of ourselves as one big family, one country. We're all together. We all represent each other....

It's like it happened to Barbados."

Or Trinidad. Or Jamaica. Or Puerto Rico or Curacao. Let us be our brothers' and sisters' keepers.

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UPDATED: Wyclef under attack: doubts raised about Yele Haiti

It  has been less than a week since Haiti, a member of our Caribbean family, was hit by an absolutely devastating earthquake.

But already the cynics' chorus is tuning up.

On Thursday (two days after), The Smoking Gun website launched a salvo with an article entitled 'Wyclef Jean Charity's Funny Money', claiming that Jean's Yele Haiti charity "has enriched the singer."

They based their charges on an assessment of Yele's tax returns and wrote:

As seen on the following pages from the foundation's 2006 tax return, the group paid $31,200 in rent to Platinum Sound, a Manhattan recording studio owned by Jean and Jerry Duplessis, who, like Jean, is a foundation board member. A $31,200 rent payment was also made in 2007 to Platinum Sound. The rent, tax returns assure, "is priced below market value." The recording studio also was paid $100,000 in 2006 for the "musical performance services of Wyclef Jean at a benefit concert." That six-figure payout, the tax return noted, "was substantially less than market value." The return, of course, does not address why Jean needed to be paid to perform at his own charity's fundraiser. But the largest 2006 payout--a whopping $250,000--went to Telemax, S.A., a for-profit Haiti company in which Jean and Duplessis were said to "own a controlling interest." The money covered "pre-purchased...TV airtime and production services" that were part of the foundation's "outreach efforts" in Haiti.

Wyclef of course, hit back on his return from Haiti, where he has been digging bodies out of the rubble and so on, in the video posted at top, where he gave answers to the questions raised by TSG.

Chief was the claim that he had used Yele Haiti to enrich himself, as claimed by TSG, based on the $100 000 payout in 06 for the charity concert. Wyclef makes it clear this payment was not for himself but for production costs:

"Whatever show you're doing, there's what's called production for the show. You can't do a show without production. You need lights, you need a stage. Where's the band going to come from? You need a manager, you need a tour manager. All of these things have to be accounted for."

Which to us here at Islandista seems like a pretty reasonable explanation. As we look at the evidence, it seems the only thing Yele has been 'guilty' of is being late with their accounting - and not being a professional charity that has been in the 'charity business' for a long time, this is understandable.

Even leading charity ranking site, Charity Navigator, which is itself a bit suspicious of Yele, admitted that "charities are often not especially timely in filing these documents."

They also went on to note that some 69% of Yele's funds goes to program expenses (this is as opposed to administrative overhead costs), though they pointed out that their "research shows the most efficient charities spend at least 75%".

As far as we can see it, the situation is this. Yele Haiti is a relatively new charity organisation and may not be run by people who are in the professional charity business, hence it has a surfeit of enthusiasm and a deficit of efficiency. It needs to improve its administrative and accounting practices, certainly but it does not deserve the accusations and allegations being made of it, especially at a time like this.

And especially when Wyclef, as Haiti's most famous son, has the influence and native contacts to do things in Haiti that other NGOs don't.

Interestingly enough, several experts have written about this same problem which charities often face - that is, people questioning their effectiveness, using overhead expenses as the ONLY measure.

While that is an easy indicator, it cannot be the only measure of whether a charity is doing good work.

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Oh Ayiti...

There are no words we really have tonight to express the sorrow and dread we feel for our Caribbean sisters and brothers in Haiti after the earthquake which hit hours ago.


I'm sure every true Caribbean person felt the same way: "Why Haiti? Of all places, why Haiti?"

Is like ... oh gawd nah... dey cyan get a lil bligh? Not even a lil one?


We're heartbroken. We're afraid of what horrors daylight will reveal. We're vex and want to shake our fists at the powers that be, both spiritual and temporal, who seem to have turned their backs on Toussaint and Dessalines' proud republic.

And the lyrics of the bard of Trinidad David Rudder's song rings even truer tonight in our heads.

Haiti we're sorry,

Haiti we're so sorry.

One day we'll turn our heads

Restore your glory.

Mwen desole Ayiti.

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