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Giana Abreu-Christopher, professionally known as Regal, is a mother of five, self taught seamstress and fashion/jewelry designer from St. Croix, US Virgin Islands.​

CEO and founder of designs by Regal, a brand created to encourage an appreciation for Caribbean culture and how we can further express pride for our heritage through the use of madras fabric.

She has grown her small business as a seamstress into a brand incorporating and highlighting madras as a Caribbean statement piece in fashion, elevating the recognition of a cultural fabric. Traditionally used in Quadrille dancers attire, Moko Jumbie attire and Food Fair decorations to now being the identifying print of the Virgin Islands.  Her madras brand includes unique fashion, signature jewelry and collaborative madras fashion photography.

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Regal began incorporating madras as early as 2016 to create couture pieces for Festival pageant contestants and client custom orders aimed towards cultural festivities like our annual Agricultural Fair.

Through her specific marketing of madras custom orders in anticipation for the annual celebration, vending madras crafts and fashion during the Agricultural Fair festivities over the years, madras has now become the events leading attire.

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In 2019 when African print was at its peak as a cultural fashion statement, while working with madras fabric and learning of its history, Regal saw an opportunity to focus her brand around highlighting madras as the identifying print of the Caribbean. She began integrating madras into trending designs growing her brand not only in the Virgin Islands but onto an international level extending to Paris, France.

designs by Regal has been featured on marketing advertisements for the annual Madras Day 2022 & 2023 event held in France while partnering with My Girlfriends Closet St.Croix and St.Thomas to be the flagship store for the brands signature pieces during 2022-2024.

In October 2024, Regal was invited by the University of Edinburgh to speak on her brand and the integration of madras in Caribbean culture during the 'Connecting Threads: Fashioning Madras in India and the Caribbean' Madras Symposium held at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, where she additionally performed a traditional headwrap demonstration.

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Regal has mastered her use of madras while still respecting, maintaining and sharing its cultural significance, volunteering her time to local schools with cultural workshops for different grade levels, offering custom madras fashion from casual to couture designs and continually cultivating madras fashion photography with Caribbean models, photographers and destination sights.

Regal seeks to continually influence clients to define their style with bold, colorful, trending madras reflecting Caribbean apparel that says who you are without having to speak. 

 

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