What to know
- Sophupshop was founded in late 2022 to early 2023 after Danièle Dennis returned to Toronto following her MFA studies.
- The brand offers Caribbean-inspired stationery, apparel and playful goods that blend culture with everyday design.
- At its core, sophupshop is rooted in diaspora identity, joy and the idea of creating a “soft landing” for connection and self-expression.
- Standout pieces include the “gallivanting” T-shirts, the Toronto patties tee, and an upcoming illustrated poster celebrating Caribbean foods.
From drawing patties to handcrafting paper dolls and creative stickers, Toronto artist Danièle Dennis is reimagining Caribbean culture through design.
The Scarborough-based brand, sophupshop (pronounced ‘sawf-up shop’), offers Caribbean-inspired stationery, apparel, and playful goods. It was born out of a deeply personal moment in Dennis’ life.
After completing her MFA at the University of Pennsylvania in the U.S., the Montreal-born artist returned back to Toronto at a time of a major transition: she had just become a mother — a change that was both exciting and eye-opening.
In that space, she shifted her energy to something familiar, a craft that she’s been passionate about.
“I feel like I was sort of in the throes of postpartum depression. Art and drawing were my way of trying to return to self,” she explained to Now Toronto.
What started as a personal outlet quickly became something more meaningful. Dennis began doodling Caribbean-inspired characters, a type of work that felt freer and more outside the structure of academia and the corporate world.
When she started sharing these drawings online, the response was warm. The work was resonating.
“What I thought was just something small and funny for me ended up being something other people were connecting to, and that was the start of sophupshop.”
Culture and identity
Dennis’ creative practice has always been rooted in identity, long before sophupshop even existed.
Born in Montreal to Jamaican parents and later moving to Toronto as a teenager, she grew up navigating multiple cultural worlds. That became a central aspect in her artistic work, from studying studio art and art history at the University of Toronto to co-running an artist-led gallery space in Scarborough focused on community and accessibility.
Looking back, she sees a clear connection.
“There was always this through line. Trying to understand my Caribbean roots, my people, our history, and finding ways to put that on a pedestal,” she said.
Sophupshop is now an extension of all her lived experiences.
Where culture meets play
At first glance, the brand leans playful: paper dolls, illustrated food characters, colourfeel tees. But there is a lot of intentionality behind all the pieces.
Dennis is interested in expanding how culture is expressed and who gets to access it.
Instead of limiting Caribbean storytelling to traditional formats, she’s experimenting with more approachable, exciting ones.
“I think finding creative and whimsical ways to tell our stories is really important. There’s just so much to unpack about Caribbean culture. Using things like stationery or stickers, something you might not expect, to share Caribbean culture,” Dennis said.
That accessibility is a big part of why her customers appreciate her products. In one instance, a customer told Dennis that a sticker on her laptop, featuring ackee, Jamaica’s national fruit, sparked a conversation with a stranger.
In another, someone shared that the designs brought back memories of a simpler time back home in Jamaica.
What might seem like something small – a sticker, a mug, a drawing – started to reveal itself as something much deeper.
“Something that could be seemingly silly, is actually, in fact not. It’s actually showing that representation matters. It’s showing how important it is for us to feel connected. It’s showing how important it is to highlight our home, highlight the Caribbean, and really platform it.”
Connection is also closely tied to another core pillar of sophupshop: play. For Dennis, play isn’t just about nostalgia; it’s necessary. It’s something she believes people lose over time, especially going through adulthood and responsibility.
She sees her work as a way of bringing childlike curiosity and wonder back.
“We become adults, and we’re imbued with all these responsibilities, and there’s a spark that we had as kids. That we sometimes, often, lose along the way. And so I feel like being able to draw that out of people, I feel like that’s actually what sophupshop does,” she explained.
That same philosophy shows up in one of her favourite pieces, her “Black girl gallivanting” t-shirt, which reclaims a word often used negatively and reframes it as something that is joyful and liberating.
“We deserve to occupy space. We deserve to frolic. We deserve to be whimsy.”
A lens to the city and a look into Dennis’ artistic world
Her work also remains strongly tied to Toronto. One of her standout pieces, the Toronto Patties T-shirt, highlights the Caribbean patty businesses (Allan’s, Randy’s, MichiDean, Patty Time and Fahmee’s) across the city while inviting people to debate their favourite spots.
At the same time, she’s continuing to expand her creative horizons. One upcoming piece, an illustrated poster titled A Taste of the Caribbean, brings dozens of Caribbean foods to life as characters in a dancehall-inspired scene, just “liming” and having a good time.
And behind it all is a process that blends intuition, research, and a lot of experimentation. Sometimes her ideas begin with a single word, which she maps out through associations before translating into sketches.
Other times, it’s about rethinking language: taking a word and reshaping its meaning to reflect a more empowering thought.
“I feel like we’re really all about owning our culture and occupying space, being unafraid to be loud, being unafraid to be colorful, being everything that we are meant to be. I feel like that is really at the core of what I’m trying to do,” she said.
Even the act of drawing has become part of that rhythm, something she now does digitally, often in quiet moments between raising her two children, a practice that she finds relaxing.
At its core, sophupshop is about creating what Dennis describes as a “soft landing.”
In a world where people, especially Black women, she said, are often made to feel like they need to constantly prove themselves, she wanted to build something that felt like the opposite: a space rooted in joy and affirmation.
“I wanted our brand to be welcoming, I wanted it to feel like a version of home. I wanted it to feel soft. Like that moment when you’re a kid just playing with Lego’s and having the best time.”
