Every January, St. Croix’s annual Crucian Christmas Festival concludes with a spectacular vision: A Carnival procession makes its way through downtown Frederiksted, bringing with it revelers wearing sequin-flecked feathers, rhinestone-covered harnesses, and ornate headpieces, who dance through the streets in a resplendent flurry. Even amid a sea of such grandiose garments, Shamari Haynes is hard to miss: He’s clad in iridescent lime green shorts, carrying a massive spread of multicolored feathers on his back, while commanding singular attention on the Carnival road. But for anyone who knows him, Haynes’s striking look is not a surprise but an expected highlight of the yearly festivities.
Haynes is the CEO and designer behind Simply Sophisticated Fun Troupe, a Carnival band that’s been a Crucian mainstay since he founded it as a high schooler 17 years ago. In the Caribbean countries where Carnival is celebrated, many festival participants choose a “band” to be their home base while “playing mas” (mas is short for masquerade, and the phrase basically means attending carnival). When it’s time for the parade, bands make sure their attendees have everything they need, like food, free-flowing drinks, and the eye-catching costumes that have become synonymous with the festival itself. Carnival traces its origins back to the 18th century, when enslaved people in Trinidad burned sugarcane in protest of European plantation owners—and organized their own fêtes because they were barred from attending white-only masquerade balls. At these gatherings, attendees mocked the slaveholders’ attire with their own costuming. That spirit is still alive today in the 21st century, with traditional characters, like towering stilt walkers called moko jumbie, still making an appearance in the celebrations of many islands across the Caribbean.
At the Crucian Christmas Festival this year, I marched in the main parade with Simply Sophisticated, which is how I met Haynes. I had played mas elsewhere—in Trinidad and Jamaica—and been welcomed by their bands, but I was struck by the diversity of gender and aesthetic expression in Frederiksted. While in St. Croix, I quickly learned that Haynes’s band has made a name for itself in part because it exemplifies a creative freedom that’s rare in some other Carnival spaces: Haynes, who is also the deputy commissioner with the US Virgin Islands tourism department, is an out queer man, and his troupe prioritizes cultivating an inclusive environment for all revelers, regardless of gender or sexuality.
Haynes’s influence is apparent in the kind of costumes that festivalgoers wear each year. Costume varieties are, typically, designated either “male” or “female,” and in many cases, the most intricate costumes have often been reserved for women, with men’s options being more understated. Women can choose from crystal-covered monokinis, wire bras, and bikini bottoms, complete with matching armbands, leg bands, tiara-like headpieces, shimmery stockings, and, of course, massive “backpacks” made of multicolored feathers. Men, meanwhile, often just pick from a range of colored trunks, sometimes with corresponding accessories, but backpacks are a rare sight. (The differences in Carnival attire across genders, and the corresponding prep work required, are so well-known they’ve inspired many a meme.) When my partner and I played mas in Jamaica, for example, he was one of many, many men wearing the default attire for male revelers—our band’s official T-shirt and shorts.
