International fashion designer starts her recording career with a prayer

There are many facets to Sophia Dias, but globally, she is known as the innovator of the futuristic, full-coverage, unisex designer sunglasses GOA-Warp, with its latest collection hand-made in Italy. Born to a Portuguese father and East Indian mother, who she says fell in love in Goa, a former Portuguese enclave, Sophia found their story beautiful and used that as inspiration to brand her designs when she started her company in 2014.

“I am fortunate to have fantastic parents. Their life has given me many opportunities, including exposure to the cultures that make up the world,” Sophia told The Sunday Gleaner.

Her upbringing transformed her into a globetrotter from the early stages of development, living partially in India, China, and Europe and spending holidays in Jamaica, which she calls her ‘second home’ because “I have spent so much time, from travelling to Jamaica on holidays as a child [and] into my adult life [visited] so often and have managed to forge great friendships here. I even spent time learning how to jerk chicken for my love of the cuisine”.

The designer made her home in Chicago and became a respected and beloved presence in the cultural and business section of the city. However, experiences of domestic abuse led her to find other creative outlets, including cooking and writing, from which she established the Sophia Dias Supper Club and became an author of a book titled Sábio: A Culinary Journey, with a collection of approximately 30 dishes.

GREATEST SETBACK

“The greatest setback has been the part of my journey where having worked hard to succeed, there was a life partner – my estranged husband – who did everything to bring me down. Many people may wonder, but it’s the most frightening thing to leave an abusive marriage, and the easiest thing to do is to stay to tell yourself it’s going to get better and he is going to change or that a miracle is going to happen, but it doesn’t. You have to have courage to ask people and God to help you. That man I was married to and whose hands I suffered immense hardships and abuse after 17 years of blood, sweat, and tears took everything from me. It came to a point where I was literally left to die,” Sophia opened up about the harsh reality she faced.

“The domestic abuse only began when we started making money from a company we built together and expanded into a multimillion-dollar company that is in 12 cities in the US and is now in over 17 countries across the world. The more money we made, the more nefarious the lifestyle became – drugs, alcohol and even a second wife, call it that. When I won the criminal case in Chicago, he retaliated by taking everything I earned, every penny, and left me perpetually with US$20.40 in my bank account, and I was ordered to move out of my home into a one-bedroom hotel with my pets,” Sophia shared.

She focused on writing her emotions more. Like her day, which starts with her prayer, Sophia is now embarking on a music recording career. Her first single is a prayer titled Psalms 23, originally written in French. And it would not have been fulfilling for her, she said, if she did not step into that direction with the help of her Jamaican allies. The recording process was effortless although she initially struggled to communicate her stresses particularly “as a victim of any type of abuse it becomes very difficult to talk to anybody, but despite how hard everything else was, Psalms 23 was easy for me to deliver”.

Written at the height of the pandemic, while Sophia was in Istanbul, the song was recorded at Tuff Gong Studios by a team of experienced local musicians headed by veteran producer Clive Hunt and mixed and mastered by Shane Brown. “I became a master at wearing masks. I really did not know how to reach out to my God but had picked up the hotel Bible to read the Book of Psalms, [and] a year later, I am in Jamaica recording my single, and it is a dream come true.”

A LIFE OF MUSIC

“Music has been an important part of my life. When I was bored, my parents made me do lessons in the art (of music), and that lasted about 10 years. As a student of a boarding school, we had to be involved in the choir, and now, I can use that. I am truly blessed to be working with some of the finest musicians like Hector Lewis, Michael Fletcher, and Dean Fraser, among others. They will be helping me to bring my ideas for an album to life,” Sophia said of her full project, which will be a distillation of the several genres, not only reggae music.

Her husband was convicted of aggravated domestic assault in criminal court in Chicago, but Sophia’s battles did not stop there. In fact, she said that“the process of divorce is nearing the end, but I still question his reasons for all that he has done. He could have walked away and given me what is fairly mine. Another song on the album, Why, is about that.”

Her creativity, she says, is a family gift. Sophia, like her mother, is a clothier, but her perspective evolved from seeing a rich cultural tapestry of people and places through voluntary service to women’s shelters during her travels, her involvement in children’s charities, and working avidly as an animal-rights activist has had a profound effect on her entire life, not just her design business. She currently serves on the Women’s Board of the Catholic Charities.

“I was volunteering at shelters as a teenager and continue to do so in my travels because it reminds me of the lessons I have been taught, and with my own experiences, I want to show young women that there is help there and people who care,” she said.

Most of all she wants, “to bring that message that God is real and Jesus is walking with us everywhere we go. Some people talk sex, drugs, and rock and roll in their music, but I think it is sexy to speak about God and his power. I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, but I feared no evil because I felt ‘thou Art’ was with me. I want everyone to pray for and with me.”

stephanie.lyew@gleanerjm.com