Fash­ion-for­ward Ari­ma lo­cal Tabitha St. Bernard made waves in the Unit­ed States, com­bin­ing sus­tain­able fash­ion for women with her "easy-go­ing Trinida­di­an vibe and Brook­lyn edge". Af­ter in­tern­ing with Vivi­enne Tam and Tahari ASL, she suc­cess­ful­ly launched her line Tabii Just in No­vem­ber 2012, de­but­ing her first col­lec­tion dur­ing New York Fash­ion Week in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Car­a­van Styl­ist Stu­dio and the Carl­ton Ho­tel.

What do peo­ple find sur­pris­ing about you?

"I grew up in an ul­tra-re­li­gious house­hold. I wasn't al­lowed to wear pants, any­thing sleeve­less, make­up, jew­ellery or wear my hair in any­thing oth­er than one bun or plait. I wasn't al­lowed to read sec­u­lar mag­a­zines so I didn't un­der­stand the con­text of fash­ion un­til much lat­er in life."

When did the cre­ative bug bite?

"I got the amaz­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty to at­tend Bish­op Anstey High School, which was an hour away from home. It was at Bish­ops that I start­ed to ex­plore my love for the arts. For as long as I can re­mem­ber, I've loved fash­ion. We couldn't af­ford to go shop­ping of­ten so we would buy fab­ric and take it to my aunt to sew. I would sketch what I want­ed her to make and she would give me de­sign tips, based on her vast ex­pe­ri­ence and bring my ideas to life. I knew that my first love was fash­ion but nev­er even imag­ined that it could be a ca­reer op­tion."

On tak­ing a leap of faith...

"I mi­grat­ed to New York at age 19 for an aca­d­e­m­ic schol­ar­ship to St. Fran­cis Col­lege. There were no fash­ion class­es so I stud­ied my sec­ond love, Psy­chol­o­gy: af­ter grad­u­at­ing I worked with peo­ple with in­tel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties for a few years. But at 25, I had a ma­jor quar­ter-life cri­sis. I could not see my­self fol­low­ing the path I was on and be­ing hap­py at age 40.

I had a sta­ble job, great ben­e­fits and room for growth. I did some ma­jor self-re­flec­tion and re­al­ized that my dream deep down was to be a fash­ion de­sign­er. The on­ly things stop­ping me were my own per­cep­tions about a ca­reer in fash­ion and my fear of start­ing my ca­reer over. Many peo­ple tried to dis­cour­age me as the job mar­ket was tough. I ques­tioned whether I was be­ing un­grate­ful to God for my bless­ings. I couldn't re­sist the nudg­ing though, once I al­lowed the dream to take form."

On be­ing a stu­dent of FIT...

"This ex­pe­ri­ence blew my mind. I was in the mid­dle of so much cre­ativ­i­ty and sup­port for the arts. FIT taught me so much about be­ing an artist, re­spect­ing the art-form, fol­low­ing my heart and be­liev­ing in my­self. I of­ten say that if I could study at FIT for the rest of my life, I would. I felt like FIT opened my eyes to the beau­ty of the world in the lan­guage of fash­ion and they've stayed open ever since."

What was your "light bulb" mo­ment?

"I start­ed ex­plor­ing sus­tain­able fash­ion. I dis­cov­ered that the mix of eco-con­scious­ness with fash­ion was my niche. When I learnt that 15% of the fab­ric used to make cloth­ing is usu­al­ly tossed out and ends up in land­fills, I knew I want­ed to do things dif­fer­ent­ly."

The hard­est thing I ever had to learn (or do) was...

"I knew noth­ing about busi­ness or run­ning a com­pa­ny and had to learn pret­ty fast. We launched by crowd-fund­ing cap­i­tal on Rock­ethub.com. I lit­er­al­ly spent 45 days beg­ging peo­ple for mon­ey to help me start the line. My com­mu­ni­ty re­al­ly an­swered the call and we raised enough cap­i­tal to pro­duce the first col­lec­tion. I was so hum­bled by the sup­port. I'm al­so for­tu­nate to have a won­der­ful board of ad­vi­sors who lend their ex­per­tise gen­er­ous­ly to the progress of the line."

Re­flec­tions?

"Things in fash­ion move so fast that I hard­ly stop to think too of­ten. Af­ter that show, I took a mo­ment to pause and take it in. I am tru­ly liv­ing my dream and I am proof that if you work hard enough, you can over­come any­thing in life and do what you want to do. I wake up ex­cit­ed to be alive and grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ties giv­en to me, every­day."

Tabii Just cloth­ing is avail­able at se­lect on­line mar­ket­places.

Her web­site is www.tabi­ijust.com.