What to do when you’re celebrating 15 years of Caribbean fashion? Go back to your roots perhaps to be further inspired — truth be told, isn’t this what major fashion labels have done and continue to do? Brand Jamaica, whose bold rhetoric has inspired many an African liberation movement — it was certainly not happenstance why Nelson Mandela made Jamaica one of his very first stops post-release from his South African prison cell — continues to influence globally, and 47 years after the visit of Emperor Haile Selassie, Kingsley Cooper, the man who initiated Caribbean Fashion Week and has helmed this bold initiative for the past decade and a half, has upped the ante by adding his voice and runway to those like Ethiopia’s First Honorary Consul to Jamaica, Yodit Getachew, to change the perception of Ethiopia from famine, war and poverty to one of Ethiopia’s Rennaissance.

To this end, Caribbean Fashion Week slated for Kingston June 6-10, will this year include Ethiopian collections and Saturday, June 8, will feature Fikerte Addis and Mahlet ‘Mafi’ Afework, two of Ethiopia’s talented young designers, and one of the nation’s top model Yodanos Teshager Bitew gracing the catwalk at the National Indoor Sports Centre. Ethiopian superstar Kuribachew ‘Kuri’ Woldemariam, dubbed The Queen of the Ethiopian folklore, will also be in attendance, closing the “Ethiopia Night” presentation ahead of pop superstar Kelly Rowland, former member of R&B group Destiny’s Child.