Fay­ola KJ Fras­er

Vin­cy de­sign­er Karen De Fre­itas-Fras­er has been mak­ing waves in the world of fash­ion, rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing Caribbean wear, with her vi­sion­ary ap­proach to cen­ter­ing the Caribbean Woman in the glob­al fash­ion dis­course.

Born and raised in St Vin­cent, with fam­i­ly and roots al­so in T&T, De Fre­itas-Fras­er, who styles un­der the moniker Josephine De Fre­itas, is not on­ly a de­sign­er and styl­ist with in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence and ac­claim but al­so a so­cial en­tre­pre­neur with a deeply root­ed pas­sion for retelling our sto­ries at the core of her work.

An all-round “cre­ative”, De Fre­itas-Fras­er be­gan her ca­reer as a vi­su­al artist and event dec­o­ra­tor as the op­por­tu­ni­ties in the fash­ion sphere were lim­it­ed in St Vin­cent af­ter her grad­u­a­tion from com­mu­ni­ty col­lege. She learned to sew “un­der Vin­cy fash­ion leg­ends, Patrice Red­dock and Ms Bar­row,” and then moved to New York in 2010 to at­tend Par­sons the New School for De­sign. While in NYC, her acute tal­ent was no­ticed and em­ployed by brands such as Zac Posen and Al­ice & Olivia, and she in­terned at var­i­ous fash­ion hous­es. Af­ter com­plet­ing her de­gree, she of­fi­cial­ly launched her well-known Caribbean brand, So­Ka.

Forged out of a child­hood dream, So­Ka, a play on her own name–“So-Karen” and an ode to so­ca–got im­me­di­ate in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion from its launch. In the first year of So­Ka, De Fre­itas-Fras­er was in­vit­ed to Vir­gin Is­land Fash­ion Week­end, Mi­a­mi Fash­ion Week and New York Fash­ion Week. She re­mem­bers her first de­signs as “what I thought a de­sign­er should pro­duce, like gowns and evening wear”, ver­sus her own au­then­tic ex­pres­sion shin­ing through in her de­sign. Her de­signs were pub­lished in news out­lets such as Fash­ion Bomb Dai­ly, worn in Vogue and seen in Harp­er’s Bazaar Ser­bia.

Af­ter her whirl­wind of life-chang­ing ex­pe­ri­ences liv­ing and work­ing in the Unit­ed States, De Fre­itas-Fras­er re­turned to St Vin­cent and be­gan teach­ing to en­sure a steady stream of in­come. She was forced to bal­ance the prac­ti­cal with the af­fairs of her heart, teach­ing along­side cus­tom de­sign work for her brand. The weight of both de­vo­tions led her to burnout in 2017, and she qui­et­ly quit de­sign­ing in 2017. Not eas­i­ly dis­suad­ed from her child­hood dreams and life­long pas­sions, De Fre­itas-Fras­er soon af­ter “re­alised there was noth­ing else I want­ed to do but de­sign and cre­ate”.

Af­ter the set­back of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, she dived head first back in­to de­sign­ing in 2022, with a re­newed sense of in­ten­tion­al­i­ty and com­mit­ment to the women she was serv­ing. In the world of fash­ion, very of­ten women who don’t fit the es­tab­lished mould are dis­card­ed and ex­clud­ed from the glam­or­ised nar­ra­tive of fash­ion. With a keen eye on this phe­nom­e­non, De Fre­itas-Fras­er is de­ter­mined to break that pat­tern. “I want to en­sure that the de­sign process is eth­i­cal,” she says, “and to make sure I rep­re­sent and speak for women of the glob­al ma­jor­i­ty, as I have seen first-hand how we are ig­nored”.

“If I wasn’t go­ing to be a de­sign­er, I would have been a his­to­ri­an,” she mus­es, con­sid­er­ing de­sign her way of con­tribut­ing to the lost and un­told sto­ries stripped from the Caribbean by colo­nial­ism. She has based var­i­ous of her col­lec­tions on Caribbean dance­hall queens, Cu­ba, and the Mafia in the 1940s, an un­re­leased col­lec­tion based on an un­named Cre­ole woman in the 1840s and her cur­rent col­lec­tion, based on Trinida­di­an painter Boscoe Hold­er’s work.

De­scrib­ing the chal­lenges she faced in de­sign school, one that stands out is her per­sis­tence and com­mit­ment to de­sign­ing with Caribbean colours and bold prints, which did not fit in with the mod­ern and min­i­mal aes­thet­ic of her peers. How­ev­er, she stayed true to her Caribbean essence and has seen a warm re­cep­tion of her cloth­ing. She is over­joyed at the in­crease in Caribbean de­sign­ers cel­e­brat­ing our aes­thet­ic and cul­ture at the fore­front of in­ter­na­tion­al fash­ion at present. “That’s my place in life,” she says “to cen­tre Caribbeanism and the unique­ness of the Caribbean Woman in the fash­ion world”.

De Fre­itas-Fras­er spends her free lunch times be­tween teach­ing class­es de­sign­ing, sketch­ing, cut­ting fab­ric or work­ing on a pat­tern, armed with her re­newed de­vo­tion to her brand. Even af­ter achiev­ing so many mile­stones in her fash­ion ca­reer, she still con­sid­ers her­self an emerg­ing de­sign­er and de­scribes the anx­i­ety that comes with val­i­da­tion in the in­dus­try and hav­ing to el­e­vate her brand as a one-woman show. She al­so faces the chal­lenge of be­ing a small busi­ness own­er and wish­es that there were more spaces to col­lab­o­rate and com­mis­er­ate with oth­er en­tre­pre­neurs. “I have to have this in­sane amount of delu­sion that it’s go­ing to work out in the end,” she laughs. And it is do­ing just that, as she is at present field­ing in­vi­ta­tions in­to amaz­ing spaces “that I thought it would take me the next five years to get in­to”.

Next up for this blos­som­ing brand? De Fre­itas-Fras­er has been in­vit­ed to show­case her de­signs at Mi­a­mi Swim Week and Paris Fash­ion Week, and those are at the top of her agen­da for 2024. She al­so in­tends to re­lease a new col­lec­tion, a fash­ion film, and fur­ther her col­lab­o­ra­tions with artists in St Vin­cent. At the core, she wants to ex­plore and de­fine Caribbeanism, and “push back against the Eu­ro­cen­tric stan­dards of beau­ty” that have been forced on us through­out his­to­ry and through the main­stream me­dia.

She wants to con­tin­ue her phil­an­thropic work, which she be­gan through her brand in 2018 and pro­vide train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion for younger Caribbean cre­atives through the off­shoot of her brand, So­Ka Gyal. “And I want to work with Ri­han­na,” she adds in, smil­ing at the thought.

Karen De Fre­itas-Fras­er is a Caribbean woman at the fore­front of fash­ion, ever true to her­self, and com­mit­ted to de­sign­ing beau­ti­ful cloth­ing “made for us, by us”.