Ubiquitous designer responds to costume debacle

An apologetic Leroy Anedu, designer of the Ubiquitous section in Bacchanal Jamaica, who had come under fire for failing to deliver costumes to some revellers, and providing faulty attire to others, yesterday told The Gleaner that he is no con man. "I feel really really bad. I don't want to be seen as a scammer," he said.

Revellers complained that they did not receive their costumes from Anedu which prompted Bacchanal director Micheal Ammar to step in and open band house on Sunday morning to outfit angry carnival goers with t-shirts or whatever they could find so they could still enjoy the road march. Anedu said initially he had 100 orders but this dwindled to about 75 by collection day, as some persons dropped out for various reasons.

He said in total about five pieces were incomplete and some were missing certain elements. He said on collection day on Saturday, some persons just never turned up to collect their packages. For those missing feather back packs, he said that was his fault. "The feather, that is my fault. I slowed down the feather production because I had to deal with other things." Ubiquitous costumes ranged from US$300-700, but he said he did not do this to make a profit. "We didn't enter to make a profit, we were aiming to break even as this was our first time doing a section." As for complaints of costumes falling apart, he said they were done by a professional, and pondered if some persons were just taking advantage of the situation, and makibg it seem like the entire section did not receive their costumes.

He said reports that the Ubiquitous Instagram page was deleted are incorrect. He has turned off the comments to the page and deleted his personal page because of the comments he was being tagged in which were full of expletives. "I miscalculated and just couldn't make the 8:30 a.m. start time. The numbers I had for some persons just weren't working and some were overseas numbers. I finished those who needed backing at about 10 a.m. and was going to go to the lunch stop to make the delivery, but someone told me that it wasn't safe. I gave up and said no one is going to accept it at this time of the day. I feel really, really bad."