By Cassell Ferere from Issue # 2

Photographer Olivia Ghalioungui

Stylist Manvi Bhatnagar

HMU Eloise Bourges

Designer Rushemy Botter and his creative half, Lisi Herrebrugh, have found love together in the process of creating fashion. The two have been working together since Rushemy entered university. The duo has since tangoed between fashion house Nina Ricci and Botter. At Ricci, Lisi and Rushemy tap into Parisian culture, and Rushemy is the first Black man to lead as a designer. At Botter, he and Lisi pronounce their interpretation of a Caribbean Couture drawn from their home islands. 

Caribbean Couture represents the life of the islands and the few surrounding land-hinged nations. Botter retains the value of nature that is intrinsic to the culture. From the seawater to the coral reefs, to the familiar palm leaves and foliage, rich and robust. What Rushemy and Lisi identify as Caribbean is inherently the same, the ocean breeds life to these islands of paradise.

Caribbean Couture for Botter is what Rushemy describes as the “practical way of dress” when drenched in the sun and enduring the heat. The inventive aesthetic of Botter creates the couture tailoring they are known for, infusing the elements of the Caribbean into its DNA. The Caribbean life is dependent on the sea. The water is “the lungs for the island(s),” says Rushemy.

He remembers his grandfather was a fisherman. Wearing Polo shirts is the unofficial uniform for many who live in the Caribbean, from the fishermen and mechanics to the travel and real estate liaisons. 

Inspiration for Botter designs derives from the lives of those fishermen. The salty air and fishing nets, the boat gear, and the occasional dive into the water are the attributes consistent with the Caribbean Couture aesthetic. The ocean directly relates to their families, their food and their commerce.

Lisi and Rushemy are five years apart in age and grew up five minutes apart in separate Dutch villages in Holland, near Amsterdam. Lisi's mother is Dominican-born, birthing Lisi on the Hispaniola island in the Caribbean archipelago, or the Greater Antilles. 

Rushemy was born on the island of Curaçao, one of three Dutch-Caribbean islands floating just above Venezuela on the South American mainland. Rushemy and Lisi would eventually move with their families to Holland with fathers of Dutch ethnicity…

Continue reading story in print issue # 2 here

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