Shoma Per­sad has em­barked on a jour­ney of self-dis­cov­ery and has “fall­en in love with home again.” It all came to­geth­er in per­fect tim­ing says the savvy fash­ion de­sign­er and cre­ative di­rec­tor.

From ex­u­ber­ant pleat­ed ruf­fles and el­e­gant flowy el­e­ments which echo the sandy shore­lines and un­du­lat­ing waves of Mara­cas and Cas­tara to strik­ing prints mir­ror­ing T&T’s lush flo­ra and fau­na, Per­sad’s first so­lo ex­pres­sion, “Trop­i­cal Mas­quer­ade”, from Shoma The La­bel, is the em­bod­i­ment of all things Caribbean, quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Trin­bag­on­ian–dy­nam­ic and vi­brant and wrapped in so­phis­ti­ca­tion.

Designs from Shoma The label.

Five years af­ter her de­but as one half of a re­gion­al­ly-ac­claimed de­sign­ing duo, Per­sad has had to move from a place of un­cer­tain­ty, re-brand­ing her­self to emerge as a con­fi­dent cre­ative com­fort­able in her own skin. She launched her col­lec­tion on De­cem­ber 1. The re­sponse? Phe­nom­e­nal! Through her new line, she in­vites Caribbean women to con­tem­plate their rich, mul­ti­cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty while pro­vid­ing a plat­form for oth­ers to un­der­stand the Caribbean aes­thet­ic through an imag­i­na­tion of her home­land.

“I re­alised that when it’s time, it’s time. You don’t need to rush, fuss. It will all work out when it has to,” Per­sad told the Sun­day Guardian.

The vi­sion for her new brand was sparked in Sep­tem­ber last year in France at the Pre­miere Vi­sion Paris, the fore­most col­lab­o­ra­tive in­ter­na­tion­al event for the fash­ion world. Among a host of in­ter­na­tion­al fash­ion ex­perts who knew lit­tle else about T&T be­sides its ex­is­tence, Per­sad found her­self hard-pressed to ex­plain the brand she co-owned at the time.

A designs from Shoma The label.

(c)sanianitos 2014

“It’s been a re­cur­ring sit­u­a­tion where we try to em­u­late what’s hap­pen­ing on the out­side in the fash­ion world and we don’t look in­side for in­spi­ra­tion. And that’s what changed in­side of me. I found my iden­ti­ty and I found that us­ing our col­lec­tive iden­ti­ty as a peo­ple was so much stronger and a much more beau­ti­ful form of ex­pres­sion for my art. Any­body can be a fash­ion de­sign­er, but not every­body is a Trin­bag­on­ian. The brand came from find­ing strength in what we have in our twin-is­land re­pub­lic.”

Sol­id work on the col­lec­tion be­gan dur­ing the first lock­down in April ear­li­er this year. A stick­ler for de­tail, Per­sad pulled to­geth­er a bril­liant team of artists, pho­tog­ra­phers and styl­ists, draw­ing on the tal­ents of print de­sign­er James Hack­ett, a Brazil­ian artist for vi­brant print il­lus­tra­tions, and jew­el­ry ar­ti­sans San­ian Lewis of Sa­ni­an­i­tos and Trinida­di­an-born Jade Gedeon of We Dream in Colour, Mass­a­chu­setts. Fea­tur­ing lo­cal artists is im­per­a­tive to en­hanc­ing the Caribbean aes­thet­ic, Per­sad feels.

“We had a strong team guid­ed by a clear vi­sion as to what I want­ed. Be­ing in lock­down made things clear­er. It gave us time to think. It slowed down every­thing, so it was ben­e­fi­cial to us.”

Even the back­ground melody used on Per­sad’s video mon­tages fell per­fect­ly in­to place. On a dri­ve home one day, Kitch’s “Take me to Trinidad”, an oldie Per­sad had nev­er heard be­fore, came across her ra­dio, she said. It seem­ing­ly en­dorsed her theme.

With­in a week of her launch, she had re­quests for her im­pres­sive pieces from bou­tiques in Bar­ba­dos and a Bar­ba­di­an-owned shop in LA.

A designs from Shoma The Label.

With its glam­ourous, ver­sa­tile, time­less cre­ations, Shoma The La­bel tran­scends the no­tion of lux­u­ry re­sort wear as sim­ply cov­er-ups and swim­suits. Per­sad lov­ing­ly in­fus­es her per­son­al sig­na­ture style of state­ment sleeves, short skirts and so­phis­ti­cat­ed, non-over­pow­er­ing prints.

“You do want to see the woman who’s wear­ing the out­fit. The pur­pose is to up­lift the woman, give her con­fi­dence and add to her beau­ty. A lot of peo­ple look out­side for the muse, but I de­sign for the muse in­side your head which is you,” she said.

Fash­ion has al­ways come easy to the gift­ed de­sign­er whose pen­chant for cre­at­ing ex­tends to pho­tog­ra­phy and just about any­thing artis­tic. Of course, hav­ing dou­ble ma­jored in Mar­ket­ing and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment at Ry­er­son Uni­ver­si­ty, Cana­da, has al­so helped sharp­en her brand.

Her re­al task came in re-brand­ing to her self-ti­tled la­bel. Per­sad ad­mit­ted she was a bit ner­vous ven­tur­ing out as a so­lo fash­ion house.

A design from Shoma The Label.

“The lessons I learned in clos­ing the part­ner­ship chap­ter re­al­ly pushed me. I had no choice but to do it on my own and I wasn’t go­ing to let my vi­sion fail. I’m still hard on my­self though, but on­ly be­cause I want to put for­ward the best ver­sion of my­self and show­case T&T in the best pos­si­ble way.”

Em­brac­ing the tremen­dous growth she has ex­pe­ri­enced this year, Per­sad said she in­tends to con­tin­ue evolv­ing and hopes that oth­ers will find val­ue in her per­son­al and sar­to­r­i­al mes­sage of re-dis­cov­ery and re­silience.

“It wasn’t an easy jour­ney. It gave me con­fi­dence; con­fir­ma­tion that if you see your­self some­where and work hard to­wards that, it will hap­pen. It did teach me a lot about self-be­lief. You can come out. Even if it’s hard to­day, to­mor­row is not go­ing to be the same day.”

Per­sad is ac­ces­si­ble on her com­pa­ny’s What­sApp hot­line, 35-SHOMA and www.shomath­e­la­bel.com

Cre­ative Di­rec­tor & De­sign­er - Shoma Per­sad

Pho­tog­ra­phers - Mar­lon James, Elon Thomas & Josi­ah Per­sad

Styl­ists - Em­ma Fos­ter-His­cock & Cyan Gomes

Make­up & Hair - Paula De Souza

Mod­els - Shal­isha Stew­art & Fariel Ali Khan