Fashion Friday Part Few: The Styles of Brooklyn Carnival, Cont’d

September 9, 2011

Words by Eddie STATS Houghton, photos by Yofray Ray

The LargeUp crew was out on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn in full force on Monday, with several photographers documenting the explosion of color that is the annual West Indian American Day Parade. In this last of three posts documenting the festivities, Yofray Ray–the youngest photographer on the LargeUp set–brings his distinctive eye to street-style–or rather, Parkway style.

If Brooklyn’s Labor Day Carnival (AKA NYC’s official West Indian Day Parade) is nothing else it is an opportunity to meet pretty much all of Brooklyn (and a good section of Queens, the Bronx and other boroughs) in person; face to face, shoulder to shoulder, bumper to bumper. An unending source of people-watching, it is also an unending source of fashion ideas as New York’s Caribbean community puts not just its West Indian pride but also its West Indian pomps–the distinct propensity for creativity and cool–on display, peacock-style for the word to see. You might not wear multi-colored plumage or rock a Haitian flag as a cape on any day but Labor Day–but you might just color-coordinate your flag bandana with your striped plimsolls or rock a custom Trini-colored polo. Consider the following flicks to be arrows in your quiver to keep your fashion bow strung throughout the year. After all, if you can catch our eye by standing out from a crowd of two million souls getting on mad–that is the definition of swagger. More pics after the jump.