WHEN YOU FIRST MEET JACQUELINE BENN SCHUPPE, you know that she is a woman with an obvious flair for fashion, and someone who likes to stand out from the crowd.
But what isn’t more obvious is the long difficult journey that she has travelled to reach this point, especially after experiencing several serious health challenges.
“I had seven aneurysms in 1992, suffered a major stroke and was in a coma,” Jacqueline said. “There’s no other reason why I’m here other than God.”
While her body bears the scars and visible signs of her surgeries and recovery, Jacqueline still suffers from serious migraines that sometimes require medical intervention to give her relief.
Still, she has not allowed her health issues to derail her or cause her to become less than who she is. Along with retaining a zest for life and living, Jacqueline has nurtured her love for clothing and fashion into a successful career as fashion director at Avery Jay Fashion Consultants in New York.
“I have always been into fashion. When I lived here, that was where my money went,” she says, laughing. “I’ve always travelled and shopped. I always would rework things that I bought. I had a friend who was a seamstress, and we would come together and rework the ideas I had in my head.”
Jacqueline said part of her reasons for going overseas was to pursue her love for fashion.
“Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot that I could do here,” she says. “This is why I want to do something for the young people in Barbados, to give them the opportunities that I didn’t have as far as fashion is concerned.”
That sense of giving back brought her to last year’s BB Fashion Week where she did a seminar.
“I saw an array of talent from here in Barbados and the Caribbean as well,” she said. “As a result of that, I’ve been working on internships for some of these youngsters. The first internship is with Victor Luna from Project Runway with Vincentian designer Kimon Baptiste, and she will be interning with him in New York probably the end of this month.”
Because of her work in the fashion industry, Jacqueline knows the importance of being prepared educationally and professionally. It was a path that she had to take as well.
“I attended Fashion Institute of Technology, where I did merchandising management and did a two-year degree at Berkeley. I remembered a professor saying to me ‘Jacqueline, you’re very talented and your education is one thing no one can take away from you, so go and do your Bachelor’s’ – which I did.”
While her education was important, Jacqueline said her going back to school came about because of her illness.
“When I first came to New York, I got into partying and stuff,” she said. “After this issue with my health, I looked around and said ‘Jacqueline, you’ve been here and done nothing with your life’. And I came out of the hospital and I was still ill, but I registered for school right away.”
The aneurysms proved to be a wake-up call for Jacqueline.
“To be honest, I didn’t understand the severity of aneurysms, but after my brain started to swell and I had the massive stroke, that’s when it came through that I could possibly die.”
But, fortunately, Jacqueline survived and because of her illness decided to really live.
“At one stage I was living in Europe and worked as an assistant fashion buyer at Harrod’s of London, and then I went to Austria and then back to New York to finish up my degree,” she said. “But I’ve always done freelance styling and personal shopping throughout my career in retail.”
For someone who has such varied experiences, Jacqueline has tried to infuse her sense of style with influences from where she has lived. Now she’s committed to reaching back and helping young people from the Caribbean to explore and tap into the opportunities that are available.
“I think that young people here need to get out of Barbados and do internships,” she said. “That’s the only way they’ll know what the industry is like and what is expected of them.
“You know, it took me a long time to get where I am now, but I persevered.”
