50 years of Fashion in Portugal at the latest MUDE exhibition
Portugal Pop – Fashion in Portuguese 1970-2020 explores the last 50 years of fashion history in Portugal. The exhibition, which has almost 200 coordinated by 40 designers, can be seen at Casa do Design, in Matosinhos, until September. Bárbara Coutinho, director of MUDE – Museu do Design e da Moda, and curator of the show, explained to Vogue that the objective of this project is above all, fostering debate.
That’s more or less how we got here. With Maria Gambina’s skirts, Dino Alves’ dresses, Nuno Gama’s shirts, Luis Buchinho’s t-shirts. But also with Doce’s immaculate wardrobe, inspired by the literature of Fernando Pessoa and Sophia de Mello Breyner and the art of Júlio Pomar, with the looks Impressive by Sónia Tavares, from The Gift, with the irreverence of Conan Osiris, with the timeless presence of Amália Rodrigues, António Variações or Simone de Oliveira. What unites them is a very unique way of being Portuguese” and of transporting them to what they wear and what they do. Portugal Pop – A Moda em Português 1970-2020 presents a selection of 180 coordinates from designers of different songs, paths and languages, multiple dialogues, with various references — from music to spectacle, from traditional crafts to sustainability — and fostering the debate on cultural, economic and social value. The exhibition is presented at Casa do Design, in Matosinhos, outside the scope of the MUDE FORA DE PORTAS program, and is open until September 18, with free admission. Vogue spoke with Bárbara Coutinho about the intentions behind this great retrospective.
How did the idea come about, and what goal did you have in mind when it comes to the history of revisiting 50 years of Portuguese fashion?
My study of Project in Portugal for many years. In 2014, with the exhibition How to pronounce design in Portuguese? The same objective of debating how the geographical circumstances of Portugal and our culture, our traditions and collective conscience, reflect in creative terms in the Project. At that time I stuck to the Project product for methodological reasons, but the idea of developing a similar study on the Project of Fashion was always present. In 2019, the opportunity to materialize this idea came with the intention that the House would make the project for me personally, but that I would decide while I decided on the collaboration between the Municipalities of Matosinhos and Lisbon and between the director of MUDE — Museu do Design and Fashion, and the House of Design. With this curatorship I tried to give a perspective of Fashion along a temporal and prismatic window, revealing several facets of society in transformation in each historical period. Thus, three different axes of memory in interrelation that each visitor can observe as protection, protection of the reading of our popular and collective culture, by its visitors. designers statements for the purpose of showing how different intentions of each of them, according to their references. The last 50 years of our history were also covered in order to recognize the influence that some figures of our pop culture, in particular music and entertainment, had on Fashion through the way they built their brand image using different aspects of Portuguese culture.
Portugal Pop – Fashion in Portuguese 1970-2020 represents a work of two and a half years of investigation. How was that process?
The years of the two-option purchase operation came about with the confinement, but it came in a certain way to reinforce the options, as it has been a long time since the one about the unsustainability of the dominant development model on a planetary scale and the paradigms that predominate above the solutions that seem urgent but are difficult to implement. On the eve of the inauguration, unexpectedly, the invasion of Ukraine takes place and we begin to witness the attempt of massive destruction of a culture, which can validate us to question which is a fashion exhibition that is thought to look at the way in which the geography and the history of Portugal, shown in the work of the designers. In the introductory text of the exhibition, I refer to the urgency of knowing, preserving ourselves and continuing to create our heritage and our collective memory, as it is important to avoid civilizational setbacks and political fundamentalism. Knowing where we came from to know where we want to go, both individually and collectively, is essential as peoples and citizens of the world. This exhibition was opened as a first systematized presentation of a hypothesis for reading the last 50 years of Fashion in Portugal, which is still intended to complement the work of other designers and artists who may be present at presentations.
By observing the creations of these 40 designersWhat analysis do you make of the evolution of Portugal as a country that increasingly uses Fashion to illustrate its collective memory in a visual vehicle?
The exhibition has 1969 as its starting point, as it is the year in which Portugal participates in Eurovision with Simone de Oliveira singing the Portuguese defoliated with a long vivid green created by Maria-Thereza Mimoso and a letter that personifies a country that wants to claim the rights of women in the world. In turn, one of the last mentions in the exhibition refers to Portugal’s participation in Eurovision in 2019, where Conan Osiris performs, dressed by Luís de Carvalho, singing a pop montage song, with allusions to fado and flamenco, to hip -hop, to Gypsy and Maghreb singing in a more visual and acoustic free message. The temporal cut between the data gives us some insight into the country that fights until the two-year dictatorship a profound transformation to preserve the conquest of freedom and democracy. As different creations of generations, forms and styles show, direct designations40, the various political and sociocultural contexts that the country represents. The plurality of proposals demonstrates the democratic freedom of our country and the right to express difference, as well as the strong investment made in the education and training sector. Looking at the various pieces in an integrated way, it is possible to identify mentalities and some contexts of change. The image of a poor, conservative, nostalgic, rural and isolated country, with rigid costumes and dark colors, was brilliantly nuanced through a more contemporary, multicultural, unprejudiced, pop and colorful language, which rethinks colorful stereotypes and breaks with aesthetic and social codes. The culture of Fashion events in the 1980s/90s began to assert itself, stimulated by several factors, such as the publication of specialist magazines and the recognition of photography and fashion production, the holding of several professional calendar of a professional calendar persists in structural problems while making it architected, unanimously referenced among designers and professionals in the medium. The small size of the market, as subsequent vicissitudes of successive crises and lack of national strategic investment, the low purchasing power of the Portuguese, the incipient appreciation of the lack “made in Portugal”, of training of sewing and tailoring professionals or as difficulties in international production of brands are some of the aspects that must be expressed, although currently there is already a reflection on the course of creation and the times of design and international creation, production formats, communication strategies and the various communication, mirroring or work on the nature and sustainability of Fashion in Portugal.
The exhibition presents a look at Portugueseness, that intrinsic quality to everything that is Portuguese — and which contains, in itself, an enormous multiplicity. Can we still say that there is “a Portuguese fashion”?
This is one of the purposes of the exhibition, to create and encourage this debate and consolidate this interpellation, especially when strangers become so everyday and natural to us that it seems that nothing is presented in Portuguese anymore. the characteristics, but also recent techniques such as the past history, the various methods of Portugal, the material heritage and i, the concepts of place, territory, identity, portugality, have been reflected in the memory work of the various methods. Fashion designers, and reinterpreted through their different goals. Our geographic region, our collective culture, our language and our culture are mirrored in the themes and imagery of many of the collections, in the reinterpretation of natural motifs or even in the choice of materials and traditional processes. All this shows the potential of Fashion and the ability that exists to recreate from its own history and the reinterpretation of references from various eras, civilizations and various eras, being an excellent example of local and global contemporary culture. However, trying to categorize a “Portuguese fashion” without a debate that encourages its impoverishment and reduce a reality nowadays and plural, with which even our regional regions are faced with if they are having to study the reality these days , as we can see in today’s confrontations, as we can see in today’s confrontations. controversies that interest Alentejano to Camisola Poveira and Capotejano. We urgently need to recognize the existence of creative and human potential, and invest in the role that Fashion, crafts and culture can play as strategic factors for the sustainable development of local economies, territories and regions of our country, as they can be very “na-cultural/urbanist” and “no-inspiration, education and development, for its example of ecology, rationality and economy of local resources. In other words, we must continue to debate and transform the Fashion system, with an ethical, social and environmental intention, in the light of the current context of refocusing the economic and productive models in force both internally and externally. If we nationalize it as a people, making an important contribution to change, whether nationally or internationally.
Text published in The Sunny Vibes Issue, available here.