Jamaica Puts a Different Face on the Runways<br />“My thought was always to give young Jamaican kids the chance to dream and see a world they may never had known existed and a chance to be world phenoms<br />that they may have thought impossible by their circumstances,” Mr. Peters said.<br />“I never knew about modeling, I never thought about modeling or talked about it when they brought it to me<br />that I have a nice style to be a model,” said Mr. Steele, who on a busy day during high season here might earn 15,000 Jamaican dollars (or $115) selling coconuts.<br />“And they immediately booked her for the 2017 campaign.”<br />When they called me for Saint Laurent, my life just changed.”<br />As it happens, “changing lives and expanding horizons” is both the mission<br />and the vaguely homiletic slogan of Saint International, a small, independent modeling agency in Kingston founded by Deiwght Peters close to two decades ago.<br />From time to time, a Jamaican star like Grace Jones shot onto the scene,<br />but not until Saint International was there anything one might credibly term a Jamaican modeling industry.<br />I’m going to send her right back,’ ” said Mr. Peters, whose belief in the young model was rewarded when<br />she embarked on a tour of the European circuit and immediately booked a runway exclusive for Gucci.
