Sophia discovered her love of fashion at a young age, beginning at age five with a pair of knitting needles. Throughout her childhood, she could often be found with her nose in a book or creating worlds of her own, often written by hand in dozens of notebooks that are now long-forgotten. It is within the endlessly expansive and fascinating worlds that she discovered and explored within literature and within herself, that her art is inspired.

While attending VCU School of the Arts, Sophia studied many diverse areas of fashion merchandising in conjunction to completing a minor in Sociology, which has elevated her ability to understand consumer behaviors, identify key performance indicators and drive sales, as well as forecast and interpret fashion trends at an understanding above other merchandisers.

In her final undergraduate semester, Sophia’s Line Development Studio project was selected as the Cotton Inc. Award Winner for outstanding work. The project involved all aspects of fashion merchandising, from the initial product development phase, where she was mentored directly by denim expert Donwan Harrell, to pitching the completed collection to a panel of esteemed critics, including Mark Messura, Senior VP of the Global Supply Chain Marketing Division at Cotton Incorporated. Sophia and her development team were honored at the 2023 VCUArts Fashion Show, where the completed collection was showcased and displayed to the public at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.