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Vashtie kola parents

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New York 'It girl' Vashtie Kola humbled by local heritage

Lau­ra Dowrich-Phillips

De­spite the ac­co­lades that she has re­ceived from heavy­weights in the Amer­i­can en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try, Vashtie Ko­la is very proud of the recog­ni­tion she re­ceives here in T&T. A first-gen­er­a­tion Amer­i­can to Trinida­di­an par­ents, Ko­la is con­sid­ered a cre­ative tour de force in New York's en­ter­tain­ment cir­cles, and while she con­sid­ers her suc­cess a tri­umph, it's the way she's per­ceived lo­cal­ly that mat­ters the most. "Be­ing in a big city like New York and hold­ing your own is a big tri­umph for me. My par­ents have a hard time un­der­stand­ing what I do but they're proud and to be able to go to my fam­i­ly's coun­try of ori­gin and be con­sid­ered some­one of worth, I feel re­al­ly proud," she said.

Ko­la was in Trinidad re­cent­ly to show her new cloth­ing line, Vi­o­lette, at An­til­ia's Be event at the Carl­ton Sa­van­nah. While here, she vis­it­ed rel­a­tives in Ch­agua­nas, and sev­er­al ar­eas across the coun­try. A video of her trip is post­ed on her we

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Vashtie Kola is truly a renaissance woman - New York based Model, Director, Filmmaker, Artist, Designer, Creative Consultant and DJ. She has cultivated the Downtown New York City scene for over a decade as a style icon, but her curatorial outreach and influence spans worldwide.  

She moves easily among Fashion, Film and Music; she has emerged as “a role model for young tastemakers,” as the The New York Times titled her when they wrote about her in a Style section feature profile. Black Enterprise coined her “Vashtie Kola: Curator of Cool.” Vashtie is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts where she studied film. She grew up in Albany, New York as a first generation American of Trinidadian heritage.

From an early age Vashtie found ways to create options when she felt like she didn’t fit in or lacked economic means. She worked in an Albany tattoo parlor as a young teenager and dreamed of going to film school. “When you are alienated for being different, you begin to be unafraid of who you want to be. I’m comfortable with being creative. It allowed me say, you guys think I’m

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As a New York based director, filmmaker, artist, designer, creative consultant and DJ, Vashtie Kola is truly a renaissance woman. She has cultivated the Downtown New York City scene for over a decade as a style icon, yet her curatorial outreach and influence spans worldwide. Moving easily among fashion, film and music, she has emerged as “a role model for young tastemakers,” as the The New York Times titled her in a Style section feature profile. Black Enterprise coined her “Vashtie Kola: Curator of Cool.” Vashtie is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts where she studied film and grew up in Albany, New York as a first generation American of Trinidadian heritage. When she established herself in New York in 1999, she found her way to places like the legendary Supreme skate shop on Lafayette St. in the East Village, where she fell into a vibrant DIY scene. The avante garde press soon declared her “Downtown’s Sweetheart.” She challenges the boundaries of gender, beauty, and individuality embodied by the aesthetic of her brand Violette, which she launched in fall 2008. Violette is c

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