Sesame Flyers Goes “Egyptian Royale” for New York Carnival 2015
Kings, queens, warriors and gods took over Brooklyn in June 2015 as Sesame Flyers International unveiled “Egyptian Royale,” its presentation for New York Carnival.
The theme transformed the band launch into a colorful journey through ancient-Egypt-inspired imagery, with elaborate headdresses, jewels, feathers and costumes representing everything from warriors to royalty and mythology.
It was also one of the final major New York mas-band launches of the 2015 season — and the costumes quickly got people talking.
Welcome to “Egyptian Royale”
Sesame Flyers built the 2015 presentation around 10 individual costume sections, each using its own colors and design while remaining connected to the larger Egyptian Royale concept.
Later cultural documentation of Sesame Flyers described the designs as ranging from comparatively simple costumes to elaborate king and queen portrayals. Approximately 600 costumed masqueraders eventually joined the band for the 2015 Carnival season.
That gave Egyptian Royale plenty of room to move between different parts of the theme.
One section could lean into warriors.
Another could represent royalty.
Others could pull from gods, mythology and the larger visual language associated with ancient Egypt.
On launch night, those individual ideas came together onstage for the first time.
Costumes People Wanted Immediately
The launch appears to have made an impression quickly.
A contemporary Carnival review published on June 22, 2015 described Sesame Flyers as the last of New York's major bands to unveil its costumes that season and credited Stronjeh Creations with developing the Egyptian Royale vision.
The review also reported that costume options in some sections were already sold out before a full week had passed.
For masqueraders, that was the fun part of launch season.
The theme had been announced.
Now came the real decision:
Which section are you playing with?
From Brooklyn to Eastern Parkway
By Labor Day, Egyptian Royale had grown from a collection of costumes on a launch stage into a band of roughly 600 masqueraders preparing to take over Eastern Parkway.
The Egyptian theme continued through the children's and adult presentations, with the costumes appearing in Carnival competitions as well as on the road.
Sesame Flyers finished second in the Junior Large Band competition with Egyptian Royale: The Prince & the Princess Egypt, showing how the theme carried across different parts of the organization.
One of the season's standout individual costumes also came from Sesame Flyers: Kay Mason's “Mythical Birds of Peace, Love and Prosperity,” a large-scale portrayal associated with the band and later documented as part of New York's Carnival costume tradition.
Nefertiti and Egyptian Royalty on the Road
Once September arrived, the controlled runway atmosphere of the launch gave way to the movement and energy of Carnival.
Costumes that had been carefully modeled under stage lights were now being worn for hours outdoors, surrounded by Soca, trucks, flags and thousands of spectators.
Among the sections identified from the 2015 presentation was Nefertiti, adding another recognizable piece of Egyptian royalty to the larger theme. The current Julianspromos archive also records Sesame Flyers finishing second in the Adult Large Band competition with Egyptian Royal/Royale.
The launch had introduced the concept.
Eastern Parkway was where hundreds of masqueraders brought it to life.
From “Vogue” to “Egyptian Royale”
Egyptian Royale also showed how dramatically a mas band could reinvent itself from one Carnival season to another.
In 2013, Sesame Flyers had presented “Vogue,” mixing the visual language of fashion and Carnival during the organization's 30th-anniversary year.
Two years later, the runway was still there — but the world around it had completely changed.
Now it was Egyptian royalty, warriors, gods, feathers and elaborate ceremonial imagery.
Same band.
Completely different Carnival.
From the Julianspromos Archives
Julianspromos documented the Sesame Flyers “Egyptian Royale” band launch during New York Carnival season in 2015.
Unlike several Julianspromos band-launch assignments from this period, there was no on-camera host for this coverage. Julian C. Hackett filmed and edited the presentation, focusing the surviving video directly on the costumes and runway experience.
The original “2015 Sesame Carnival NY Mas Band Launch Highlights - Egyptian Royal” video was uploaded to the Julianspromos YouTube channel on July 27, 2015. YouTube continues to list that publication date today.
The footage preserves Sesame Flyers before Egyptian Royale became a roughly 600-person Carnival presentation on Eastern Parkway — when the costumes were still new, the sections were being revealed and New York was deciding what it wanted to wear for Labor Day.
