The Best of Moda Lisboa – Autumn Winter 2013/2014

Last month Lisbon opened its fancy, tiled doors to a host of fashionistas for ModaLisboa – Fashion Week Lisbon. This was not my first trip to cover this obscure fashion week and hopefully isn’t the last!

While Lisbon has a set of established, sophisticated and wearable designers; ModaLisboa also hosts some of the hottest new designers that push the boundaries of wearable fabrics, shapes and art.

Hosted in the beautiful Pátio da Galé buildings the event kicked off with designs from sculptor and jeweller Valentim Quaresma.

VALTENTIM QUARESMA

His structural pieces of dreamscape body amour glimmered on the catwalk: handmade mainly from low denomination coins, recycled and salvaged metal parts in a workshop in Lisbon this showed the gritty, new design talent that is hiding in Lisbon waiting to explode onto the worldwide fashion scene.

RICARDO DOURADO

A fabric that has recently become popular with designers across the world is Neoprene. This rubbery little number was used by designer Ricardo Dourado with an ethnic print of bold florals.

The strength and thickness of this fabric enabled the designer to create structure and bolshie silhouettes as well as offering the opportunity to laser-cut intricate patterns and holes creating a thick mesh.

Ricardo Dourado’s collections have caught media attention in the past as the designer has always aimed to shock, accessorising with gang tattoos and blinging gang signs in previous collections.

LUIS BUCHINHO

A huge designer name to come out of Lisbon is Luis Buchinho, showing in Paris each season before showing in the beautiful city of Lisbon.

The catwalk show took place outside, in the arches of Patio de Gale, making the most of the stunning architecture which was mirrored in the strong, clean lines of the collection.

With a strong core colour palette of scarlet, black and white the collection was entirely wearable, reaching out to a wide range of ages with classic jackets and coats that held a contemporary twist and trimmed with shiny, sexy leather.

VITOR

Shying away from colour trends somewhat and storming out on a new limb was LAB designer Vitor who used huge, balloon shrimp props on the runway, opened with a caped rollerblader and showed a range of fantastical prints and jailhouse stripes.

The collection titled, somewhat egotistically, VITOLOGY attempted to start a new religion, using distorted, recreated images of the gods, a warrior cat, a three eyed wise pug and a fabulous unicorn.

NUNO GAMA

Nuno Gama, known for his menswear and for his casting creates a spectacle of 50 of the most attractive men in Portugal.

The collection featured a traditional style print with flashes of red oversized bow ties. The slick men’s tailoring featuring cropped jackets and tight fitting trousers gave way to more casual wear. The casual jackets featured bulky fox fur collars; fleece and t-shirts bore a decahedron print.

This season also presented a new line of jewellery – modelled shirtless by the beautiful Nuno Gama boys, who were also holding puppies to close ModaLisboa. Be still my beating heart! Thank you Nuno!

MIGUEL VIEIRA / NUNO BALTHAZAR

Menswear integrated with women swear in many collections and strong, unique tailoring showed incredible skill from larger designer names such as Nuno Gama and Miguel Vieira.

Vieira’s collections have been consistently strong, last season showing an acid infused yacht trip and this season mellowing for a winter in the country with large floral prints, double breasted, grey tweed and dainty polka dots in muted tones.

The womenswear in contrast showed a powerful, sexy femme: gun metal sequins, silk, deep slashed necklines and a formfitting yet painfully chic silhouette.

Similarly Nuno Baltazar’s collections always seem to hold classic pieces in high esteem such as the full, flared leg jumpsuit, worn with other sized sunglasses and a metallic gold belt – not to mention elbow length leather gloves. This collection was more suited to a James Bond set than the Portuguese high street!

Find out more about ModaLisboa: www.modalisboa.pt

By Jemima Daisy

Catwalk images by Rui Vasco