Fay­ola Fras­er

Trans­port­ed thou­sands of miles away from home, the first In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers came to Trinidad and To­ba­go al­most two cen­turies ago on May 30, 1845.

As a na­tion, the ar­rival of the East In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty marked the in­tro­duc­tion of a core thread in T&T’s cul­tur­al fab­ric, one that would be­come in­sep­a­ra­ble from our na­tion­al iden­ti­ty.

From cui­sine and lan­guage, span­ning fash­ion, re­li­gion and tra­di­tions, In­di­an in­flu­ences have helped shape near­ly every as­pect of what it means to be quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Trinida­di­an. For Trinida­di­an de­sign­er Shoma Per­sad, founder of cloth­ing brand Shoma The La­bel, the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­flect on the In­di­ans’ ar­rival feels deeply per­son­al, and one she seized with great pride.

Her lat­est col­lec­tion, “A Thread Across The Wa­ter” is not sim­ply an of­fer­ing of fash­ion; it is an in­ti­mate trib­ute, an op­por­tu­ni­ty to tell the sto­ry of her fam­i­ly’s her­itage, and con­nect, through de­sign, with the her­itage of the thou­sands whose jour­neys shaped our na­tion.

At the heart of the col­lec­tion is the sto­ry of Per­sad’s great-grand­fa­ther, Kala Ma­haraj, who left Agra, In­dia, in the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry and jour­neyed across the oceans in­to the un­known, bring­ing pre­cious lit­tle with him to Trinidad to work as an in­den­tured labour­er. Like many who took the jour­ney, the ex­pe­ri­ence in­ter­twined both op­por­tu­ni­ty and loss.

Leav­ing be­hind every­thing fa­mil­iar, Ma­haraj left his home­land, his lan­guage and his fam­i­ly, with lit­tle cer­tain­ty about what await­ed him on the oth­er side. What he car­ried in­stead was un­shake­able courage, deeply-root­ed hope and the de­ter­mi­na­tion to be­gin again.

“There is some­thing pro­found­ly mov­ing about know­ing that a man who ar­rived in Trinidad with so lit­tle, un­der such dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances, be­came part of the foun­da­tion for every­thing that came af­ter, in­clud­ing me.

He could nev­er have imag­ined that gen­er­a­tions lat­er, his sto­ry would be re­mem­bered not on­ly with­in our fam­i­ly, but rein­ter­pret­ed through art, fash­ion, and sto­ry­telling in a way that cel­e­brates his jour­ney and the lega­cy he made pos­si­ble,” said Shoma.

Through her lat­est Spring/Sum­mer 2026 col­lec­tion, Per­sad has laid bare her heart and soul, in ef­forts to pay homage to her an­ces­tors with deep grat­i­tude, de­scrib­ing it as “the most per­son­al work I have cre­at­ed to date.” She hopes that the col­lec­tion, as an act of re­mem­brance and cel­e­bra­tion, res­onates with count­less oth­ers who have shared fam­i­ly his­to­ries of re­silience and en­durance, defin­ing the In­di­an di­as­po­ra in T&T.

View­ing her own fear­less­ness and strength of spir­it as an in­her­i­tance from those who came be­fore her, Per­sad recog­nis­es that it is through her grand­fa­ther’s courage and sac­ri­fices that her own jour­ney has be­come pos­si­ble.

Cen­tral to the col­lec­tion is Per­sad’s ex­tra­or­di­nary de­sign process dri­ven by her un­bri­dled cre­ativ­i­ty. As one of the few de­sign­ers who un­der­takes her own tex­tile de­vel­op­ment, she em­braces the chal­lenge of not sim­ply cre­at­ing beau­ti­ful tex­tiles but trans­lat­ing an emo­tion­al­ly-charged his­to­ry in­to con­tem­po­rary lux­u­ry fash­ion. Bal­anc­ing sym­bol­ism with so­phis­ti­ca­tion, she has de­signed and cre­at­ed prints for the fab­ric of each piece of cloth­ing, de­scrib­ing it as “one of the most labour-in­ten­sive and emo­tion­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant parts of the cre­ative process.”

As each print is de­vel­oped by hand, built from care­ful­ly re­searched mood­boards, Per­sad is able to draw on his­tor­i­cal mo­tifs, ref­er­ences and sym­bols as vi­su­al sto­ry­telling de­vices.

De­ter­mined to tell sto­ries through cloth with­out al­low­ing the col­lec­tion to feel too lit­er­al or cos­tume-like, she fo­cused on cre­at­ing pieces that feel el­e­vat­ed, con­tem­po­rary and in her words, “true to the re­sortwear lan­guage of the brand”.

Fig­ur­ing out how to blend the metaphor­ic el­e­ments in­to the phys­i­cal was the cen­tral ax­is on which her de­sign process piv­ot­ed. One of her crit­i­cal ques­tions was “how to trans­late mem­o­ry, dis­place­ment, re­silience, and her­itage in­to prints that still feel light, lux­u­ri­ous, fem­i­nine, and mar­ketable to our buy­ers?” For a de­sign­er who rel­ish­es in and thrives on the cre­ative process, and is known for her metic­u­lous at­ten­tion to every de­tail, Per­sad out­did her­self. The re­sult is a col­lec­tion that strikes the bal­ance. Lux­u­ry and his­to­ry; beau­ty and depth; func­tion and fash­ion - these are the cor­ner­stones of her work, the del­i­cate bal­ance she con­tin­ues to strike and what sets Shoma the La­bel apart.

Her cre­ative process be­came un­ex­pect­ed­ly rem­i­nis­cent of her great-grand­fa­ther’s ex­pe­ri­ences. As she worked to bring the vi­sion to life and grow her brand, she found her­self nav­i­gat­ing pe­ri­ods of un­cer­tain­ty.

Re­flect­ing on the jour­ney, she says she felt “mo­ments of self-doubt, set­backs, emo­tion­al ex­haus­tion, cre­ative chal­lenges, de­lays, and pe­ri­ods where I ques­tioned my­self deeply.

There were mo­ments where I had to keep go­ing with­out clar­i­ty, trust my in­stincts when things felt un­cer­tain, and con­tin­ue build­ing de­spite ob­sta­cles that felt over­whelm­ing.”

While care­ful to ac­knowl­edge that the hard­ships ex­pe­ri­enced by her an­ces­tors were im­mense, and her ex­pe­ri­ence is not the same as what they en­dured, she, how­ev­er, felt a deep con­nec­tion with their spir­it of per­se­ver­ance. Through chan­nelling their for­ti­tude and us­ing it as a re­minder of the courage of her blood­line, she pushed through to com­ple­tion.

But Shoma Per­sad is no stranger to over­com­ing. Build­ing a glob­al lux­u­ry brand from T&T has been no easy feat.

Af­ter launch­ing Shoma the La­bel in 2020, amidst the rat­tling un­cer­tain­ties of the on­set of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, she has con­tin­ued to nav­i­gate chal­lenges re­lat­ed to lim­i­ta­tions in sourc­ing, pro­duc­tion, ex­port, lo­gis­tics and vis­i­bil­i­ty in the Caribbean fash­ion in­dus­try. How­ev­er, she can proud­ly ac­knowl­edge her sig­nif­i­cant ac­com­plish­ments, as to­day, Shoma the La­bel now ships to more than 39 coun­tries world­wide, demon­strat­ing that Caribbean fash­ion can do it all - com­pete on a glob­al stage, while re­main­ing au­then­tic, and root­ed in our her­itage.

Per­haps the most emo­tion­al as­pect of this project re­mains a sim­ple pho­to­graph of Kala Ma­haraj. Look­ing at his face, Per­sad sees not on­ly a brave man who stepped in­to the un­known but al­so traces of her fa­ther, her fam­i­ly and her­self.

It is a con­stant re­minder that In­di­an Ar­rival Day is not a dis­tant, for­got­ten his­to­ry; it is a liv­ing lega­cy.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, the col­lec­tion is her love let­ter to her great-grand­fa­ther and the his­to­ry he and oth­ers lived and shaped.