People who say all the costumes in T&T Carnival look the same are missing the point, because costumes are not what people are buying. (Even when the costumes didn’t look the same, people were not necessarily buying the costumes.) What people buy is to be among their tribe (pun intended). They want to be with people of like mindedness.
Seth Godin describes a tribe as “a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.”
So what are the bikini barers buying? They are buying all sorts of things including, social status and hierarchy, exclusivity and rebellion.
The costume is their badge to the outside world about who they are. It is also the code to communicate with their inner circle.
