Peter Minshall was born in
Georgetown, Guyana on 16 July 1941. He moved to Trinidad as a small child after his father took a job as a cartoonist. Growing up in
Port of Spain, Minshall was exposed to
Carnival from a young age. He made his first costume at the age of 13. He attended
Queen's Royal College, then went on to study Theatre Design at the
Central School of Art and Design in London. Minshall designed Carnival costumes for relatives and family friends while in school. At art school, he wrote a thesis about the bat (a traditional Carnival character). His first major theatrical commission, for a production at
Sadler's Wells, came after a director saw a portfolio of his Carnival designs. Minshall's mother asked him to create a costume for his adopted sister Sherry-Ann Guy (Coelho) to wear for carnival 1974, the pivotal event in Minshall's Carnival career. The costume he created was called "From the Land of the Hummingbird". According to him, it took five weeks, 12 people and 104 feathers, each made of 150 different pieces of fabric. ==1996 Olympics and dancing inflatables==