By P.J. Malone
In one of many past interviews, Fashion mogul Peter Nygard revealed that he loves to design and build. He gets a lot of joy and fulfillment from not just building structures but building up people as well.
It began with his, as he puts it, accidentally stumbling into the fashion industry. But once there, it was déjà vu. He said that he felt he had been there before and never looked back. It was his first opportunity to build.
In telling his story, Mr. Nygard recounted working in a retail store where he was destined to achieve great heights. However, he took a cut in salary to get into the fashion industry. Once there, he kept seeking ways to be better.
Nygard expressed: “It’s the building concept that I love. If I don’t get out and design something every day, I consider that day a loss.” He says designing something feels great, but the biggest thing of all is being a builder of people.
“When I see talent, I just want to give it every opportunity to build that talent to the max.” Being athletic as a young man and not pursuing Olympic dreams caused Peter Nygard to make a vow to himself: “If I ever get a chance to support someone to go to the Olympics, I’m going to go all out.”
This was the drive behind Peter Nygard giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Bahamas Olympic teams over the years supporting the Golden Girls and funding the training of a Bahamian Boxer Taureano Johnson in Cuba for years before Johnson finally made it to the Olympics.
The building of dreams doesn’t just stop with people and structures. Peter Nygard also has a dream of building a nursery for coral reef in The Bahamas.
The Caribbean is said to have had 50% of the reef area showing live coral coverage in the past and is now down to about 8%. In a June 2014 article, “From despair to repair: Dramatic decline of Caribbean corals can be reversed,” the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reported:
“The rate at which the Caribbean corals have been declining is truly alarming,” says Carl Gustaf Lundin, Director of IUCN’s Global Marine and Polar Programme. “But this study brings some very encouraging news: the fate of Caribbean corals is not beyond our control and there are some very concrete steps that we can take to help them recover.”
Healthy coral reefs are essential because, as a marine life article, “Caribbean coral reefs face collapse” of the guardian.com stresses: “Coral reefs are a particularly valuable part of the marine ecosystem because they act as nurseries for younger fish, providing food sources and protection from predators until the fish have grown large enough to fend better for themselves. They are also a source of revenue from tourism and leisure.”
Without healthy coral reefs, it would appear that the fish in The Bahamas may be negatively impacted.
Nygard has collaborated with IUCN to turn one of his lagoons into a coral reef nursery. However, this development too has been blocked as a part of the objections to Nygard rebuilding his home on Nygard Cay after a mysterious fire destroyed it.
Peter Nygard is always seeking to build dreams: whether it’s those of athletes, those of nature conservationists, or those belonging to him. It’s sad that his every effort is blocked.
