Colin, age 38, is from the island of St. Vincent & The Grenadines, where he began working on costumes for carnival when he was just a youngster.

There are three aspects to carnival: there's music, and I'm not very good at music, there's steel band, which I didn't have an opportunity to play, so this was really the only opportunity I had to be involved in carnival.

There are two aspects to the costumes that you see: there are what we call the Sections, which are the smaller costumes. The second aspect is the larger costumes, which we call individual costumes, or a lot of the time they get referred to as King of the Bands, or Queen of the Bands costumes, and those are the really large, elaborate costumes. I'm a builder, and I tend to do the headpieces for the individual sections, but the entire group, about 25 of us in the mas camp, works on everything. We try not to be too specialized, because part of the experience is so that people can understand the culture and how to produce the costumes, so that we can keep it going on for generations.

What you see in 2006 is probably a concept that's been developed since 2004. We come up with a theme, and this year's theme is called "A Touch of Silver", and, as the name implies, each section in the band will have some aspect of silver.

The passion with working on the costumes comes from being able to display your culture. In a city like New York, which is so diverse, it's good to be able to show what you've grown up with, to show why you're an individual, to show your creativity.

We're involved in carnival 365 days a year; quite often, when Labor day actually occurs, it's kind of a relief, because you've been involved in it for so long, it's like, OK we put this concept to bed. But then you've already started working on the next one, so it's really continuous.