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 the Jamaica Stock Exchange. But it was not going to be all fun and games. There would be ugly moments too, including the time when the meltdown in the financial sector threatened to drown him and his Pulse outfit in a sea of red ink and bankruptcy and when friends became few.

And there were the painful no-shows, first by the likes of Lionel Ritchie and then by hot international star of the moment, Nas, which dealt his popular ‘Superjam’ show a death blow and severely hurt his reputation as a top class promoter.

Born on June 3, 1953 in Franklin Town, east Kingston, Cooper was the second child of the late Modesta Cooper nee Riley, a teacher and Daniel George Cooper, a tailor.

He is brother to the well-known and extraordinarily articulate university personality, Professor Dr Carolyn Cooper, Donnette Cooper, Sebert Cooper, Audrey Cooper, and Stacy Cooper. His cousin is the famous Astley “Grub” Cooper of Fab Five fame.

Cooper was never shy about his love for KC which he attended on a Common Entrance scholarship at age nine, insisting that “I did not want to go to any other school”. He left KC after ‘A’ Levels in 1970, regarding his time there as pivotal in his development. He attributed the now legendary KC bravado to the fact that the school was such a successful institution and that those who had gone there had lived the motto: “The brave may fall but never yield.”

“We never fail. We suffer setbacks but we never yield. It is a true religion and it is in you. It is something you experience, live and feel. Yes, it is a most amazing thing, but it is the reality,” Cooper once said in an interview in this newspaper.

For his part, he was into an array of extracurricular activities — head boy, house captain, president of the debating society, and editor of the school magazine. He won best actor award for his role in Molliere’s L’amour est le meilleur medicine (Love is the best medicine) directed by Trevor Rhone, in the drama society.

His success in that play and a fun-seeking spirit emboldened his resistance to the strict Seventh-day Adventist rules in his household, causing a strain on relations with his parents, as he began creeping out at nights to go to the previously forbidden parties.

In a strange twist of fate, it was that search for fun that led to the establishment of a lucrative international fashion industry in Jamaica and later the Caribbean.

Out of KC, Cooper looked to a new life at The University of the West Indies (The UWI), choosing to do law. But his studies were not priority and he would admit later that “from a virtual head boy nerd leading the chapel prayers, I had turned into an out-and-out rebel”.

Instead of studying, he spent his time seeking after fun. He bought four cars during that first year, each one to provide parts to fix the other. “I knew every VW garage in Kingston,” he confessed in the interview. “I spent my first year going to parties and fixing cars.”

In the second term, he did not go to classes at all. As exams approached, his sister Carolyn asked him what was going on and encouraged him to register for exams. He read up on his first term notes and got all but one subject, which he passed in a supplemental test. He was soon after elected head of the guild press producing The UWI law journal.

In year two, he went to UWI Cave Hill, Barbados, living a totally carefree life away from the strictures of home in Jamaica, including operating a discotheque called the Sound of Loving. Cooper returned to Jamaica to complete his law degree at Norman Manley Law School in 1973, bringing home the sound system with him, upgrading it and calling it the Soul Construction.

Upon graduation he spent a year as a junior legal officer at the Administrator General’s Department, all the while still promoting sessions. He then went into private practice, spending the first couple of months with lawyer McD Messam on East Street above Sutton Street in Kingston.

Cooper practised law for five years to 1980 and packed it in. He set his sights firmly on the entertainment industry and it would not be long before an opportunity presented itself. Tobi Phillips, the model and actress, and Erica Allen, model, actress and broadcaster, wanted to stage a ‘fashions in cabaret’ gig and sought financial backing from Richard Vassell and Trevor Waddell, friends of his who had an interest in fashions.

The men asked Cooper to produce the show. It was his first experience with a fashion show and he partnered with Hillary Phillips, a lawyer friend who used to dance and sing with Rex Nettleford’s National Dance Theatre Company. The show was a hit. Feeling that they had found a formula for success, Phillips and Cooper decided to start Pulse… and a revolution in modelling.

Based on the success of the fashions in cabaret, Pulse was launched to promote concerts and fashion shows. They started with the Allan Bailey Fashion Revue from New York. But the entertainment business in Jamaica, particularly live stage shows, could at times be a hard, cruel thing.

Late starts, no-shows by key artistes, long band changes and lengthy performances by third-rate artistes getting a break on stage, were routine features of concerts that were so inefficiently produced that it could test the patience of Job himself.

Patrons were increasingly growing fed up and were looking for something else. Cooper believed that the answer was in high-quality gigs offering top artistes and superior organisation. In 1982, he introduced the ‘Superjam’ series with “the best of” as its concept.

One after the other, the Pulse razzle-dazzle paraded Eddie Kendricks, the Four Tops, Nancy Wilson, The Manhattans, Ray Goodman and Brown and the like.

In the third year of Pulse, Superjam ’84 hit a wicked snag when star attraction and top band Black Uhuru broke up weeks before their appearance at a Pulse concert series that also featured Chaka Khan.

Pulse was shaken to the core and Cooper threw in the towel.

At the same time when he started Superjam in 1982, Cooper had started Pulse Modelling Agency, now known as Pulse Model Management, and a year later launched the Jamaica Fashion Model Competition. From every part of the country emerged an endless pool of young women, blessed with sheer beauty, possessed of rare talent and eager to strut their stuff on the national stage.

The Jamaica Fashion Model Competition was the forerunner to an international modelling industry that would show the world yet another side of the country that Columbus declared “the fairest isle that eyes have beheld”.

He followed up with several innovations over the years, including: Caribbean Model Search; an international modelling agency; Caribbean Fashion Week;
Caribbean Fashion Weekly, a lifestyle television programme; and
Search for the Caribbean’s Next Supermodel, a regional fashion reality TV show.

Cooper could do no wrong. The world loved the models he was producing one after the other: Pulse model Lisa Hanna won the Miss World title; Lois Samuels was the first Caribbean model to appear on the cover of
Vogue, the coveted chic magazine.

Others became famous faces and names in the fashion capitals; Kimberley Mais-Issa being one of the most successful in the Japanese, French and Spanish markets, and Rachel Stuart who signed a lucrative TV contract with
Black Entertainment Television in the US.

The Pulse roll call of top international models, per capita, represented an embarrassment of riches: Althea Laing; Nikki Vassell; Carla Campbell; Parisa Fitz-Henley; Angela Neil; Romae Gordon; Sandra Foster; Lincoln Wynter; Juline Samuels; Reshima Hemmings; Albert Brown; Alethea Barton; Trudy Gray; Justine Willoughby; and Nikki Morris among others.

Pulse placed large numbers of models with major international modelling agencies in Europe, South Africa, Japan and the United States. These include: Elite; Click; L’Agence; IMG; Karin; So Darn Tuff; Elite Premier; Wilhelmena; and Marilyn Gaulthier, among others. And their faces and bodies have graced some of the world’s biggest fashion magazines including Vogue; Oprah’s O; Essence; Covergirl; Seventeen; Modern Bride; Cosmopolitan; Elle; Slimmer; Fair Lady; Mademoiselle, Maxim; and Sports Illustrated.

Two of his hottest models on the international catwalk were Nadine Willis and Jaunel McKenzie. Willis, described at the time by Model.com as the “hottest news in fashion today”, made the dizzying climb from the bowels of Kingston’s sprawling slums to the top 10 of the world’s most fabulous models.

She was the first black model to ever shoot the Gucci campaign and also made history when she was selected for French Vogue after only two weeks as an international model. She holds the distinction of being the first Jamaican to have appeared alone in an editorial for Vogue.

When Cooper sent polaroids he took of McKenzie, dressed in her Excelsior school uniform, to the Women Agency in Paris, they immediately got her a work visa and flew her to France to start what would become a truly amazing career. At 18, McKenzie was the winner of Caribbean Model Search in 2002, was rated sixth of Vogue models in the world and at 39th, was the only Caribbean model on the top 100 international models.

The average successful model was earning in the region of US$200,000 a year; the top model between US$30 million and US$40 million a year. From that, Pulse’s take was the standard 20 per cent commission, plus a service charge that the client (agency or company) paid for his models. He was making money.

One important national spin-off was the growth of several modelling agencies which sprang up to compete with Pulse. Jamaica now had a full-fledged modelling industry.

Things were looking good and Pulse acquired the nine-acre Villa Ronai property near Stony Hill, St Andrew. The property used to be a picturesque tourist attraction featuring old world architecture, stone work, a fountain, sculptures and an irresistible ambience. It was perfect as a centre of fashion and culture.

Cooper spent nearly $15 million to refurbish the property and had just started to feel good about his latest acquisition when the Jamaican dollar began its runaway slide and interest rate took wings in a seemingly endless spiral.

When the financial sector went into a tailspin and had to be rescued by Finsac, Pulse was battered and bruised. The equity market was almost dead. Real estate also died for the same reason. Everybody was running for cover, trying to offload what property they had.

But in 1998, Pulse took the decision to reorganise, forming a new company
— Pulse Entertainment Group. It was a chance to start over and Cooper embraced it enthusiastically. It meant a return to core values and a new discipline in financial management, planning and focus. And by 2001, the ship began to turn towards safer waters.

On Tuesday, June 18, 2024, the vibrant pulse ceased to beat. The brave may have fallen, but given the legacy he has left, in the capable hands of Safia, his daughter, Kingsley George Lawton Cooper, has by no means yielded.