Sophia Dias’ Bulletproof: “I Survived Barbaric, Brutal, Cruelty…”
The boundary-defying success Sophia Dias has attained throughout the course of her life is no happenstance; her trailblazing efforts are testament to her strength, resilience and a steadfast commitment to retaining authorship of her life story.
Born in Goa, India to a Portuguese father and an Indian mother, Dias has broken barriers as a culinary artist, fashion designer, philanthropist, film and music producer. Her work and brand are renowned in more than 22 countries including the UK, Italy, Portugal and the US, where she now resides.
Most recently her creative pursuits have summoned her to Trinidad and Tobago, as the CEO of Dias International draws inspiration from the beautiful twin-island state for filming of her newest musical project, Bulletproof II Legacy.
Of what drew her to the location, she tells Your Caribbean Guide, “I was looking for a new place to film all of my original music videos for Bulletproof II and trust me I’ve travelled the world, been to so many countries from a very young age. The more I talked to (Trinidad-born, New York-based producer) Mark (Sardegna) our team became 100% Trinidadian, I was the only foreign import,” she laughs. “So I said to Mark, this is your country and all of the team is here, including director Walt Lovelace and I said Mark, let us just fly to Trinidad and do the entire project here.”
The project is a continuation of her debut album and autobiography of the same name, the latter of which was released last October.
For Dias, her decision to explore her musical talents happened during the transformative Covid-19 period. A business trip to Istanbul, Turkey reconnected her with Naznine Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an Iranian-British citizen who was detained in Iran back in 2016 as part of a long-running dispute between the two countries. Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s plight and freedom fight inspired Dias to pen her debut song, “Psalm 23” which was subsequently recorded in Jamaica’s iconic Tuff Gong studio, produced by renowned music producer, Clive Hunt.
Advocacy and women empowerment are at the core of much of Dias’ life work. As a survivor of domestic violence, she intimately understands the struggles women too often face at the hands of their partners.
“What I endured at the hands of a former spouse was barbaric, brutal, and cruel. That is how I would like to describe it. The fact that we earned millions of dollars building companies across the world. I was abandoned in Chicago, Illinois. I had nothing to my name, just a few cents and dollars,” she recalls of what was the darkest period of her life.
“I went to bed one day as a self-made multi-millionaire and in 2016 I woke up with twenty dollars in my bank account, my then home was going under foreclosure and a female judge presiding in a divorce court in Illinois… said to me, I want you to pack your bags, your animal and leave your marital home. A stray animal on the streets had more rights than I did. I gave 19 years of my life to my former husband, my blood, sweat and tears, hard work… And I was just discarded.”
With no family in America and friends who all but disappeared in her time of need, Dias reflects on how she found kindness in the unlikeliest of places.
“Sadly the so-called friends who were closest to me, who would come to my home, have dinners and enjoy the fine life, most of them never returned my calls, most of them never returned my emails. It was complete strangers that I had just met who knew what I was going through, what I had accomplished in life and then what I was going through, those were the people who stood up and helped me. People purchased groceries for me, they bought food for my dog, a Bernese Mountain breed, so I’m very grateful to the people of America who helped me get back on my feet. And people, friends from all corners of the world who were able in a lot of cases to send me good wishes and prayers,” she reasons.
Her eyes light up and she becomes visibly filled with emotion as she conjures the memory of her beloved dog, Mr. Santos, who had also been saving grace as she navigated her trials.
“We were extremely close, we did everything together. I took him almost everywhere that I could. On that tragic night when my former spouse decided to take my life with a loaded gun, Mr. Santos, something in his instinct saw red flags and knew mummy was in trouble, actually the gun was pointed at him, too. So he was the braver one who decided to save both our lives. The gun didn’t fire, it fell down and it gave me the opportunity to save both our lives,” Dias recounts, revealing that the upcoming project includes a track dedicated to the late animal, who died last June.
“So his legacy continues. I had him since he was a little puppy so I raised him as a child,” she adds, admitting that she will likely never have another dog.
As she retraces the memory of her life’s most challenging moments, Dias says it was her own mental strength and the support of a small but mighty community, that helped her beat the odds to come out on the other side.
“My advice to women who are, sadly, stuck in challenging and brutally unfair situations in life would be to ask for help. Asking for help takes courage, it takes strength and most people are, I was myself, ashamed. I was ashamed to ask people for help. Because all my life I had provided everything that I had with my own hard work and then one day everything was gone, I had zero. The lesson here is what happened to me should never happen to another human being, irrespective of race, colour, creed, religion or nationality,” she reasons, underscoring the importance of always turning back to help those in need.
“Paying it forward is something I have done all my life. Because no matter how much I’m struggling or have struggled and the pain I have suffered… even in those circumstances I mentioned, I was feeding the homeless at Tent City in Chicago. I was serving the women’s board, Catholic Charities where we work with destitute women and children. I had nothing but I had the ability to give back. My wisdom, my energy, my strength, cooking gourmet meals for the homeless, of course all of this was funded by friends. So paying it forward is extraordinary.”
With her upcoming Bulletproof II Legacy project, Dias hopes to shed light on Trinidad and Tobago in a way that has not been captured before.
“We’re going to be going into some of the most intricate parts of the country, I have a special team who are going to be filming the making of Bulletproof II Legacy, capturing people and places without script, without choreography. I hope I would be able to independently distribute the making of the film to Netflix and other television companies so people get to see the real Trinidad and Tobago and come here and film their own visuals and music videos and so forth.”
“I love the people of Trinidad and Tobago and I love the warm welcome I’ve been given. Je t’aime. I love you all,” Dias professes.
