About

Janice Lawrence-Clarke is the President and Creative Director of JLC PRoductions, and Founder of CAFE - Caribbean American Fashion Exchange™, a program aimed at joining fashion design talent and U.S. markets, and through which she has established the CAFE™ Scholarship Fund at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT).

Lawrence-Clarke has worked in the fashion industry since 1975 first as a runway and illustration model then entered the business side of the industry with sportswear manufacturer, Evan Picone until leaving as Fashion Director. In 1984, she launched Visual Excitement!, a fashion and trade show company which produced events for the likes of Breckenridge Sportswear, Jones New York, New York City Opera Guild, and the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce.

After her first engagement in the business of fashion, Lawrence-Clarke would grow to champion the development of a Caribbean fashion industry, and relocated to Trinidad & Tobago in 1994. While there, she rose to prominence in the country’s social and fashion scene as a journalist and a fashion expert revolutionizing coverage of fashion events in print media by developing the ‘Style Page’ for the Trinidad Guardian; writing a social column for The Independent; and, working as Associate Editor of Ibis Magazine.

Demonstrating her personal belief in economic empowerment through cultural development, last September 2017, in association with the nonprofit organization, YET SHE RISE, Inc., Janice presented, The Fashion in Mas – A Fashion Parade, the “longest fashion parade in the world”, that featured 11 fashion designers from various Caribbean heritages, shown by 35 Caribbean and American models. In 2014 Lawrence-Clarke partnered in the masquerade carnival theatre company, DRJ Vision In Motion, to present the story of Mandela during the 2014 West Indian American Day Carnival Association’s Labor Day Parade, on Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn. She has produced numerous fashion and cultural presentations over the years, both in the U.S. and the Caribbean.

A fervent believer in education, Lawrence-Clarke completed the first of her degrees in Fashion Buying & Merchandising at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology while a runway/illustration model (1981). She then earned her Bachelor’s degree in Communications Technology as a Dean’s List, University Scholar, at New York University (2002), and her Masters of Business Administration from American Intercontinental University (AIU), with a dual concentration in Project Management and Entertainment Management, while in Atlanta, Georgia (2010). While at AIU, she was inducted into the international honor society, Sigma Beta Delta.