KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

Kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

Lisa Faye Sar­jeant’s DM (Di­rect Mes­sage) blew up in ear­ly April when one of her pieces was styled by Trinidad-born fash­ion ex­pert An­to­nia Fi­fi, now based in Cana­da.

With over 550,000 fol­low­ers on In­sta­gram, Fi­fi’s post fea­tur­ing the piece sparked a wave of in­ter­est, cat­a­pult­ing Sar­jeant in­to the in­ter­na­tion­al spot­light. Al­most overnight, what start­ed as a sim­ple share turned in­to a vi­ral mo­ment, as fash­ion lovers and oth­ers flocked to Sar­jeant’s in­box, ea­ger to find out more from the ris­ing cre­ative be­hind the buzz.

It was dur­ing a re­cent vis­it to Trinidad that Fi­fi popped in­to Lisa Faye Silks Bou­tique.

“I told her if you are go­ing to do this, I want it to be a kaf­tan be­cause kaf­tans are my sig­na­ture pieces,” said Sar­jeant.

“She said, ‘Girl, you will be very sur­prised to see what I can do with this.’ The reach has been ab­solute­ly phe­nom­e­nal. She has tak­en the prod­uct out of Trinidad. I think I’m cov­ered in the Caribbean, but peo­ple in the Unit­ed States, Eng­land and Aus­tria have con­tact­ed me be­cause she has that large fol­low­ing.

“I ad­mire her work, I ad­mire the sto­ry be­hind why she does what she does, and I ad­mire that she shared her jour­ney with peo­ple–like she is not just a styl­ist. I ab­solute­ly loved what she did with the kaf­tan. I didn’t know how she was go­ing to style it.”

Sar­jeant is now faced with the chal­lenge of in­form­ing cus­tomers that each of her pieces is a per­son­al piece of art.

“There are no pieces alike–when some­one gets a piece, that’s their piece,” she said.

“It’s a lot more work, but I def­i­nite­ly see it as my san­i­ty. I love what I do. I deal with every­thing that I deal with in my head while I’m paint­ing, so at least I have an out­let.”

Twelve years ago, Lisa Faye Sar­jeant ex­pe­ri­enced a mis­car­riage, ce­ment­ing her de­ci­sion to step away from her job as a ra­dio talk show host.

“It hap­pened when I was 45, and I said that’s it,” she re­called.

“That’s when I said I’m done with the me­dia and that I’m go­ing to give my ba­by my full at­ten­tion.”

The ba­by she re­ferred to was her bou­tique–Lisa Faye Silks–which Sar­jeant si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly grew along­side her me­dia ca­reer. Of course, she al­so want­ed to spend time with her ba­by girl–now an adult.

“I start­ed off work­ing in ra­dio at 98.9FM and al­so worked in TV as a pro­duc­tion as­sis­tant for the late Al­li­son Hen­nessy on Com­mu­ni­ty Date­line,” she added.

“She was just some­one a young girl like me was look­ing up to. At that time, talk ra­dio was start­ed at Pow­er 102 FM by Louis Lee Sing, Tony Lee and Dale Enoch.”

Sar­jeant took the bold step of be­gin­ning a ca­reer as a ra­dio talk show host.

“When we start­ed Talk Ra­dio it was very ca­su­al,” she added.

“You were giv­en a slot, you de­cid­ed what you want­ed to talk about, and let it make sense–and, of course, be re­spect­ful to your lis­ten­ers. My fo­cus was women’s is­sues be­cause I felt women are the base of every­thing.”

Af­ter spend­ing over 26 years in ra­dio, Sar­jeant start­ed hav­ing sec­ond thoughts.

“I felt me­dia was not go­ing in the same di­rec­tion that I was go­ing,” she said.

“I was not com­fort­able with the cli­mate of con­ver­sa­tion. It could be be­cause I was get­ting old­er and I thought, let’s get some­one who’s younger and more ex­cit­ed about this to take it fur­ther.

“I al­so want­ed a lot more peace. I paint for a liv­ing now. I can block out any­thing now. It was my job and I had to know every­thing that was go­ing on all over the world and in Trinidad as well.”

With her fa­ther, Reynold Sar­jeant, who is an artist and ar­chi­tect, and un­cle Micheal Sar­jeant who is al­so an artist, cre­ativ­i­ty al­ways flowed through her veins.

“I lit­er­al­ly paint every one of my de­signs,” she ex­plained.

“I paint on silk. I lit­er­al­ly paint like how you paint on can­vas, but on silks. Each one takes about a week from be­gin­ning to end–it’s ex­ten­sive, but it is al­so my san­i­ty.”

Sar­jeant taught Tex­tile De­sign at UWI for some time, shar­ing her ex­per­tise on tie dye, batik and sur­face print­ing.

“I didn’t en­joy any of those. I want­ed to flow like how I would flow on can­vas,” she said.

“So it was a way of find­ing out how can I get the dye to do what I want it to do, how can I ma­nip­u­late it and make it vi­brant and be­come part of the fab­ric.”

Her choice of fab­ric is silk, which she sources from var­i­ous coun­tries – Italy, In­dia, and Chi­na.

“Choos­ing silk is be­cause it nev­er fades. It is a lot cost­lier, but it is go­ing to last you for­ev­er. And af­ter I’ve put all this work in it, I would sure­ly hope that some­one would want to keep it for­ev­er,” she said.

“I think that women need to feel as beau­ti­ful as they look. How many times do we put on a dress, we know we look nice, but do we re­al­ly feel nice in it? I just want­ed us to feel beau­ti­ful and look beau­ti­ful.

“I use five dif­fer­ent silks; dif­fer­ent silks feel dif­fer­ent­ly. You can’t come in­to my bou­tique and bad-talk your­self. I re­al­ly want women to love them­selves more. We are re­al­ly harsh on our­selves and if I can do it through cloth­ing, I think it makes a big dif­fer­ence.”

While run­ning her bou­tique is her main­stay, Sar­jeant al­so spends time paint­ing on can­vas.

“I paint on can­vas when I don’t have any­thing else to do,” she said.

“It is dif­fer­ent and I have to give it a cer­tain qual­i­ty time. So I start a piece, and then two months lat­er I’ll go back at it and back at it. Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, I paint­ed on can­vas like crazy be­cause I had time. You can get lost in just ex­press­ing your­self.”

In De­cem­ber 2022, Sar­jeant held an ex­hi­bi­tion of her can­vas and silks, end­ing with a fash­ion show at Arn­im’s Gallery in Wood­brook.