There is no fashionable way to die, not even for Kingsley Cooper, the pioneer in Jamaica’s fashion modelling industry who passed last Tuesday after a brief, pain-wracked illness that has left a void this country will find hard to fill. The Pulse fashion and entertainment group founder was airlifted to Florida last week as an undisclosed illness grew worse, eventually claiming the life of the flamboyant, affable Cooper, an icon of his time. But peace came at last, the family said in a brief social media post.
For the Kingston College (KC) old boy, the long night of partying is over at age 71 this very month. They who witnessed his life might agree that it was fun can’t done, even during the times he had to trace the rainbow through the rain of difficult days. But Cooper would blaze a trail from which a national and Caribbean fashion, modelling and entertainment industry would evolve to showcase the region’s unexplored beauty waiting to dazzle on the international stage.
Cooper saw that the beauty of the Jamaican woman was more than skin deep and was inspired. Drawing on a confidence bequeathed to him by a proud KC heritage, he looked over the horizon and believed that he could create from it a product, not just for local entertainment, but something that was in keeping with the international standards of glitz, glamour and pizzazz of the world of high fashion. He founded Pulse — Jamaica’s first fashion and general entertainment company — in 1980, and listed it on t.