I told myself next year, every year. Next year is now

Somewhere around my late teens, early-twenties, I made myself a list. Not a formal one, written down, but the kind of list that lives in your chest, the catalogue of things you carry with you as markers of a life being lived fully. Places to go. Things to feel. Versions of yourself to inhabit at least once before you hit the big 30. 

Playing mas, properly, on the road, in costume, fully immersed, was on that list.

I turned 30 without doing it.

The list, and what it meant

When you put something on a before-30 list, you are doing a specific kind of thing. You are telling yourself that this experience belongs to a particular version of you, the younger, freer, less encumbered version who can afford to be bold and present and unself-conscious in ways that you secretly fear will become harder as the years accumulate. The deadline is not really about age. The deadline is about permission. You are giving yourself a window, and quietly hoping the window will do what your own confidence has not yet managed: force you through.

Playing mas was like that for me. It was not just about the carnival. It was about the woman I imagined doing it, who moved freely through a road parade in a beautiful costume without spending the whole experience managing her body and her self-image and her awareness of being seen. That woman felt like a future version of me. And the before-30 deadline was my way of saying: I want to get there. I want to be her.

I tried once. I should say that clearly, because it matters to the story. I did not simply talk about it and let the years pass. One carnival season I registered with a band, collected my costume, showed up on road day and then, in the specific private moment between having the costume on and stepping out into the morning, my nerve left me entirely. I pulled a pair of pants over the costume, got on the truck, and spent the parade standing there, watching, covered. The experience I had promised myself happened all around me and I watched it from a distance of about three feet and an enormous amount of self-protection.

So that happened.

I turned 30. I had not done the thing. And I genuinely expected to feel some species of failure about it, the quiet indictment of a promise to yourself that you let lapse.

Instead, something unexpected occurred.

The other side of 30

I woke up on the other side of that birthday and discovered that I wanted it more. The desire had not faded with the deadline. It had concentrated. It had stopped being about the list entirely and became something else, something harder to name and therefore more real.

I think what changed is that I finally understand what I am actually asking to be part of.

I have spent years covering Guyana Carnival as a journalist, writing about it, tracking its growth, interviewing the people who build it year after year with a kind of stubborn, visionary ambition that I find genuinely moving. I have watched it transform from a tentative experiment by a handful of private promoters into the single biggest tourist influx this country has ever recorded in any week of the calendar year. I have made the arguments for it, defended it against the people who say it is not ours to claim, documented what it does to this city and this country when the road parade moves through.

And through all of it, I have been on the outside looking in.

So this year I said yes. To myself, first. Before any band, before any costume, before any conversation about partnerships or ambassador roles or any of it. I said yes to being on the road this carnival. Fully. In costume. Present in a way I have not let myself be before.

And then I went looking for a band.

What I needed

I am a voluptuous woman. Full figure, large chest, the kind of body that exists at an interesting intersection in the carnival conversation, celebrated in the abstract, complicated in the practical. 

What I needed was not simply a costume that was flattering. Flattering is a low bar. What I needed was a costume I could move in, freely, unselfconsciously, for the duration of a road parade in Guyana heat without a single moment of wondering whether things were staying where they should be, or whether I was managing my body instead of inhabiting it.

That distinction matters enormously. The version of myself who pulled pants over her costume and stood on the truck was not betrayed by her courage, exactly. She was betrayed by not having found the right fit, in both the literal and figurative sense. She did not trust that the costume would hold her, and so she protected herself the only way she knew how in that moment.

This time I was determined to find something I could trust.

I found Euphoria Mas.

Three sections, three personalities

Euphoria Mas has three costume sections for Guyana Carnival 2026, and what I want to say about them as a whole before I get into each one individually is this: the range is real. These are not three variations on the same aesthetic dressed up in different colours. These are three genuinely distinct creative visions, each with its own designer, its own inspiration, and its own energy. And within each section, the inclusion of monokini options and different coverage levels reflects a design consciousness about the full spectrum of women who want to be on the road.

The Punk Rock section, designed and marketed by Olympias Fashion, operates at a specific frequency: hot pink, bold zebra print, gold studs, the kind of carnival costume that announces itself before you do. There is an attitude in this section that I deeply respect, it is not interested in being subtle, and it does not need to be. The Midline option here is a decorated monokini, and the combination of that coverage with the loud, unapologetic aesthetic of the section creates something interesting: a costume that says everything, held together by a design that has clearly thought about what it means to wear it all day.

The Variété Française section, marketed by King Leo Promos and designed by Jam Design Concepts, is where elegance takes over. Inspired by Parisian cabaret, the costume features rich sapphire bodywear, delicate gems, and tulle sleeve accents that add a softness and sophistication to the overall silhouette. This section has a single wear option, a monokini, and the design makes it feel less like a compromise and more like a deliberate choice. There is a woman who looks at the Variété Française and sees herself, and she is someone who wants the road to know she brought glamour with her.

And then there is the Samba.

The one that held me

Designed by Jam Design Concepts and inspired by the spirit, passion, and energy of Brazilian carnival culture, the Samba section is built around movement. You can feel it in the design. This is a costume made for someone who intends to actually dance, to be physically present in the music, to move through the road rather than simply occupy it.

I chose the Samba section because. The decorated bodice, with the neck piece, headpiece, sleeves, and leg pieces, gives me exactly what I described needing: structural coverage across my torso, a silhouette that holds, and the freedom to move without a single second thought. I tried it on in my mind a hundred times before I registered. I kept coming back to the same answer. This is the one.

But I would not be telling the full truth if I said the costume alone was what decided it. Because the other reason, the reason that sits below the practical comfort conversation and deeper in the chest, is the colour.

The Samba is gold. Rich, warm, layered gold.

And I grew up in Bartica. It is called the gateway to the interior, and it earns that name. The miners pass through Bartica. The boats leave from Bartica. The gold comes through Bartica.

Guyana is, at its core, a gold country. Our land is extraordinary in what it holds. And as the country has stepped onto the world stage with a new economic confidence in recent years, gold has become part of a larger story we are telling about ourselves, about what we have, what we have always had, and what we are choosing now to do with it.

So when I put on that gold carnival costume and step onto the road in Georgetown,  the capital of a country I love, at the biggest cultural event in our annual calendar, I am not making a fashion decision. I am making a statement about who I am and where I come from that I could not articulate more clearly if I tried.

The gold is Guyana. The gold is Bartica. The gold is mine.

What this year is really about

I want to be clear about something before I close, because I think it matters for why this piece exists at all.

This is not a story about a costume. The costume is beautiful, and Euphoria Mas has built something genuinely impressive for this carnival season, and I am excited to wear it in a way that goes beyond any ambassador brief. But the costume is the vehicle, not the destination.

The destination is the experience of being fully present, in my body, in my culture, in my country, without conditions. Without a pair of pants. Without the particular, exhausting work of making myself smaller than the moment I am standing inside.

I missed my before-30 deadline. I have made my peace with that. The before-30 version of me was not ready, and no deadline was going to manufacture a readiness that had not yet arrived from the inside.

The 30 version of me is ready. Actually ready, not deadline-ready, not performed-confidence ready, but genuinely, quietly, completely ready in a way that feels nothing like the anxious urgency of before. It feels like arriving somewhere that was always going to be mine. Just on a slightly different schedule than I planned.

I will see you on the road. I will be the one in gold.

Registration for Euphoria Mas Guyana Carnival 2026 is open now. Visit euphoriamas.com to view all three costume sections and register