Claudia Duarte founder and owner of Sabia.

Photo of the first dress she designed, her grand mother sowed

Born and raised in Brazil, half indigenous to Brazil and half Portuguese. Claudia carries out the foundational inspiration her grandparents passed down to her. Her grandfather was in agriculture, native to the land he raised his family on. passing down the knowledge and reverence of being inter-connected with nature. The only time Claudia had with her grandmother was when the family gathered to sow and make clothing with whatever cloths they would collect.

Through them she has a passion for using her hands, to being at one with nature and her environment. This has greatly influenced claudia’s production, and why she fell in love with Bali. A major healing component bali inspired in Claudia was that difference in people, in culture ignited collaboration and team-work. 

Claudia arrived in Bali in 1980. From playing around with limited recourses in her up-bringing, to finding a world of variety in HOW to put this together, she embraced her journey of creating clothes. Sabia’s current form, is a small group of 4 women, two mother, daughter duo’s, as-well as a team in Sulawesi who create one piece of clothing, Sabia’s detailed kimono. In total, Sabia is a team of 2 tailors, a manager and a designer. In this way, the clothing you see takes a lot of time.

Sabia came online in 2018, with no budget, Claudia had to up-cycle and re-create dresses from previous pieces of clothing, some pieces worked out beautifully. This process comes naturally as it was one of the main skills she acquired. 

A goal Sabia is working towards is to sell out stock from collected fabrics that took place in the last 10 years, to then learn and find new sources of fabric that align with being good to our world and our people in all aspects of the production process. This is also a call out to production companies, small businesses that need support who live in reciprocation with all life, please reach out to sabia_designs@yahoo.com of course, research is taking place, nonetheless there is so much to learn with the vast network of being online. 

We are a Zero-Waste factory. 

Left-over fabric gets up-cycled. Our waste is managed through Eco Bali, a beautiful team, committed to keeping this island zero waste through their recycling program. We encourage our staff and their communities to bring this awareness into their own lives. Our Tags are made with organic, recycled material as well as natural dyes. All garments bought online are packaged from Cassava Root, dissolvable in boiling water.