The Notting Hill Carnival Launch 2025

By KitKat Brown

The Notting Hill Carnival is an iconic lively street festival in London. Meant to highlight and celebrate Caribbean culture, the carnival is an electric event that includes parades, music & dance, food, art, and much more.

One very important part of the carnival is the lineup of Masquerade Bands, or Mas Bands. Each registered mas band walks the parade route at the carnival and creates their own costumes, with a winning mas band announced on social media. The general public is able to register with any mas band and purchase a costume to join in. This year, the Notting Hill Carnival is very important to Paddington Arts. Since first being involved with the carnival in 1996, Paddington has always participated within a partnership. This is the first year that Paddington Arts is registered as an individual mas band at the NHC. In order to promote registration with Paddington Arts, Deputy Director Eldora Edward and her team organized the Notting Hill Carnival Launch, held onsite at Paddington Arts on Sunday, March 23. The launch showcased the fantastic carnival costumes, commissioned through a local designer known as Miracle Precious. Beyond that, the launch itself was a vibrant and festive gathering, with food and musical performances that created an enjoyable and buzzing environment.

Before the launch, I was able to take a look at the costumes as they were being made. Eldora explained to me that Precious individually attaches each jewel to the costume pieces; Precious practices very serious, intricate work, and it all came to life at the launch. I was very moved after seeing Precious’ costumes on the mannequins, so I was thrilled to have the opportunity to interview her, alongside Paddington Arts social media manager Karina Saniuk, at the launch.

Precious described the creative process of fashioning these dazzling costumes: “The creative process is very long. It starts off with sketching first, and research. When I design my costumes I like to have a story behind it.” Precious drew concepts from the Ashanti tribe in Ghana as inspiration for these costumes. The embellished beading on the costume pieces is meant to mimic Kente, which is a type of colorful fabric made in Ghana. These majestic ensembles are a testament to the history and ancestral stories of the Ashanti tribe, with the costumes themselves a proud display of brilliance and regal power.  

Precious recalled her favorite part of designing the costumes: “Making them…And seeing them come to life. Obviously I have my costumes on my mannequins, but when you see my models modeling them, it’s a whole different concept. They bring the concepts to life.” Indeed, the models who performed at the launch definitely gave the costumes the meaning and spirit that they are meant to evoke. Their personas shone through and their bodies moved with the rhythm of the music, creating an inspiring representation. Overall, the Notting Hill Carnival Launch at Paddington Arts was filled with excitement, community, and joy. The display of the costumes was sure to have many folks register with Paddington as their Mas Band.