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Wednesday, May 14, 2025

Fashion designer to go global

...Charu Lochan Dass cel­e­brates her kin­ship con­nec­tions

by

20150530

As we cel­e­brate In­di­an Ar­rival Day, we look at some­one who came from In­dia and made T&T their home. In a mod­ern sto­ry of ar­rival, Shereen Ali speaks with fash­ion de­sign­er Charu Lochan Dass who came to Trinidad from In­dia as a child.

Charu Lochan Dass has no re­grets what­so­ev­er that she left be­hind a con­ven­tion­al ca­reer in busi­ness ad­min­is­tra­tion to fol­low the fash­ion muse. In fact, for her, the two merged quite seam­less­ly. A clothes re­tail­er and fash­ion de­sign­er, Dass launched her brand CLD in 2013 af­ter years of work­ing in the fash­ion busi­ness–she opened her first cloth­ing store in Princes Town in 2002. Born in In­dia, she left at the age of six to live in Trinidad. And to­day, for In­di­an Ar­rival Day, Dass read­i­ly shared some mem­o­ries from In­dia, and talked about her own sense of her­itage, and how she got start­ed along the path to a ca­reer that's both ex­pres­sive and prac­ti­cal.

"I re­mem­ber dis­tinct­ly the warmth and love of be­ing part of a close-knit, de­vot­ed fam­i­ly–my aunts, my un­cles and cousins," said Dass, re­call­ing her ear­ly child­hood in In­dia.

"My moth­er had five sis­ters (now four) and two broth­ers; a huge fam­i­ly, and of­ten there were fam­i­ly fes­tiv­i­ties. At age six, what re­al­ly stands out is al­ways be­ing sur­round­ed by loved ones...."

That strong sense of kin­ship and be­long­ing al­ways re­mained with her, de­spite sep­a­ra­tions in time and ge­og­ra­phy. Dass was speak­ing in an in­ter­view from To­ba­go, where she was hol­i­day­ing with fam­i­ly–in­clud­ing a few who came to vis­it T&T from In­dia for the first time.

Among these fam­i­ly mem­bers is an in­spi­ra­tional In­di­an aun­tie who helped whet her ap­petite for de­sign­ing clothes many years ago, and who made pos­si­ble her first un­ex­pect­ed ap­pren­tice­ship.

"As a teenag­er in Trinidad, I was ob­sessed with fash­ion, with a spe­cial pas­sion for sketch­ing and art," re­called Dass.

"My moth­er had this ex­quis­ite ta­ble run­ner from In­dia: it was hand-wo­ven with stun­ning em­broi­dery and mir­ror de­tails. It in­spired my cre­ative juices and be­fore you knew it...it was in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to an out­fit–a waist­coat, ac­tu­al­ly. That's re­al­ly how it all start­ed, my first de­sign, at age 14."

To Del­hi...

As a young adult, Dass de­cid­ed to study for a Bach­e­lor of Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion, and went to In­dia to do it–her first trip back in 13 years since leav­ing there as a child. Af­ter liv­ing in T&T for so long, she ad­mit­ted that In­dia came as a bit of a cul­ture shock for her.

"I re­turned to Del­hi, and did ex­pe­ri­ence cul­ture shock. Every­thing was very dif­fer­ent. Del­hi was now a fast grow­ing, mod­ernised city with ad­vanced in­fra­struc­ture and tech­nol­o­gy," she re­called.

"But some things re­mained the same, es­pe­cial­ly cul­tur­al­ly; they were still very or­tho­dox in their prac­tices, where­as Trinida­di­an 'In­di­ans' were more open-mind­ed–I guess, more in­flu­enced by the West­ern world, es­pe­cial­ly with at­tire."

"In In­dia, my ma­ter­nal aunt had a bou­tique with cus­tom de­signed pieces. It's there I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to merge my two pas­sions–art and fash­ion. I was able to put my artis­tic skills to the draw­ing board, and de­signed a few out­fits. When those de­signs were trans­formed in­to the fi­nal prod­uct, the out­fits were stun­ning and im­pres­sive," she said.

A cousin there en­cour­aged her to pur­sue this pas­sion, and she en­rolled in her first fash­ion course. Her path be­came clear.

...and Lon­don

In 2011, this adopt­ed T&T "is­land girl" then jour­neyed to the UK, to study Fash­ion De­sign and Mar­ket­ing at the Lon­don Col­lege of Fash­ion. It was an ex­pe­ri­ence that broad­ened her per­spec­tives, she said, es­pe­cial­ly the in­tan­gi­ble val­ue of meet­ing fash­ion stu­dents from all over the world, and hav­ing the chance to learn about their dif­fer­ent cul­tures.

That these en­coun­ters hap­pened in Lon­don was a bonus: "British fash­ion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Lon­don, has al­ways been very cut­ting edge, and typ­i­cal­ly set the trends for the world. What was show­cased on the run­ways there, on­ly be­came pop­u­lar in Trinidad sev­er­al sea­sons lat­er," Dass said, com­ment­ing: "Even the street fash­ion was dis­tinc­tive, and I was amazed at the way they syn­chro­nised var­i­ous styles, pulling it all to­geth­er."

The neck­lace of con­nec­tions she found be­tween is­land and con­ti­nents � from T&T to In­dia to Eu­rope � meld­ed, even­tu­al­ly, in­to her own unique cloth­ing ex­pres­sions, which in No­vem­ber 2013 emerged as her first CLD-brand­ed col­lec­tion: Ready to Wear 2014. It had a de­cid­ed­ly in­ter­na­tion­al, sexy, so­phis­ti­cat­ed aes­thet­ic, rather than, say, Caribbean or In­di­an.

CLD's lat­est:

The Lal­la Col­lec­tion

Not afraid to cel­e­brate the sen­su­al­i­ty of women, the fash­ions de­signed by Charu Lochan Dass re­flect her at­ten­tion to de­tail as much as they ex­plore con­trasts in form and tex­ture. One out­fit may be a trim, al­most min­i­mal­ist af­fair with sub­tle but ex­quis­ite de­tail­ing, while an­oth­er may sug­gest volup­tuous lux­u­ry with bil­low­ing yards of fab­ric and risqu� yet classy peek-a-boo el­e­ments.

Her most re­cent re­sort line, The Lal­la Col­lec­tion, com­bines glam­our with sim­plic­i­ty in com­fort­able ready-to-wear hol­i­day cloth­ing.

"When I go to my draw­ing board, es­sen­tial­ly I'm in­spired by emo­tion, what­ev­er en­thralls my soul, from a ma­te­r­i­al, to a fash­ion icon or even a client," ex­plained Dass about her de­sign process. "But I find I'm al­ways drawn to the 1960s. It was a rev­o­lu­tion­ary time for fash­ion that broke many typ­i­cal tra­di­tions. Icons like Jacque­line Kennedy and Au­drey Hep­burn brought to life time­less state­ment pieces that showed off their so­phis­ti­ca­tion and el­e­gance. This was part­ly the in­spi­ra­tion for my first col­lec­tion."

Two of her col­lec­tions were show­cased at New York Fash­ion Week (2013 and 2014). As for her next col­lec­tion, which will be her sev­enth, it will be show­cased at the Mer­cedes-Benz Fash­ion Week in Am­s­ter­dam.

De­spite such ex­po­sure, Dass re­mains down to earth about run­ning a busi­ness: "Tak­ing time to de­vel­op gen­uine re­la­tion­ships with cus­tomers is the ba­sis of any good busi­ness. I feel a con­nec­tion to every cus­tomer," she said, not­ing this has helped build the busi­ness.

"A favourite quote of mine is, 'If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.'

My vi­sion for CLD is to be a glob­al name," said Dass, "...and just like I've seen women of T&T rock the CLD de­signs, my dream is to have women all over the world feel­ing con­fi­dent, chic and so­phis­ti­cat­ed in a CLD piece! And that is be­ing re­alised this year, this month in fact; pieces from the CLD 2014 Bo­ho-Glam Col­lec­tion are now avail­able at BoutiKm5 in Ibiza, Spain. So it's just a mat­ter of time!"

Home is fam­i­ly

With her mixed home­lands, where does Dass tru­ly feel at home? She said: "Home is where my par­ents, my fam­i­ly and friends are, which at present, is Trinidad." Her fam­i­ly re­la­tion­ships are her an­chor. She then shared:

"Re­cent­ly, I came across this fas­ci­nat­ing book, Callaloo or Tossed Sal­ad? East In­di­ans and the Cul­tur­al Pol­i­tics of Iden­ti­ty in Trinidad (pub­lished 2001), by Vi­ran­ji­ni Mu­nas­inghe... and I'll bor­row the in­ter­est­ing de­scrip­tion from her book. She opt­ed to use the metaphor of 'tossed sal­ad'–an im­age which sig­ni­fied di­ver­si­ty, but un­like 'callaloo,' each di­verse in­gre­di­ent main­tains its orig­i­nal­ly dis­tinct and unique iden­ti­ty. This is how I view my eth­nic her­itage: very revered, and dis­tinct­ly in­grained with­in me."


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