Portuguese fashion takes to the museum

“Tell me what you like… and I will tell you who you are”. This fairly popular questionnaire during the Parisian Belle Epoque is the motto of an exhibition featuring outfits and personal objects of some of the most renowned Portuguese fashion designers. This exhibition opened on March 29 and will be on show until June 12 at Mude, the Lisbon museum of fashion and design. Featuring 60 designs by 22 Portuguese fashion designers who regularly show their collection in the catwalks of ModaLisboa and Portugal Fashion, visitors have here a great opportunity to witness more than 20 years in the history of this creative area. Each designer answered the questionnaire and added some personal objects to provide a better picture on who they are and what they like.

By looking at some of these objects we get to understand some of these creator’s personality, path and answers to some things that were going around in our heads. A fine example is the record cover of Human League’s “Dare” right bellow three outfits by Luis Buchinho, thus proving what we suspected – that the song “Seconds” played at his recent fashion shows in Paris, Lisbon and Oporto comes from that very same album, one of his favourites. And looking at the objects selected by Alexandra Moura we do get to see her fabulous spectacles covered with flowers used in one of her shows, her great shoe designs, and when looking at the Smiths record cover we do confirm what we suspected, that se has indeed a fine music taste too.

But the purpose of this exhibition is to show the outfits created by the likes of Ana Salazar, Alexandra Moura, Luis Buchinho, José António Tenente, Vítor, Lidija Kolovrat, Aleksandr Protic or Ricardo Andrez just to name a few. Each designer was asked to submit three outfits – the very fist in their career, an outfit which they consider an hallmark in his/her career and a third one, a proposal for 2012.

During the opening ceremony, Barbara Coutinho, the director of Mude and who commissioned this exhibition, expressed her wish that some or all the designers would donate outfits to this Museum’s permanent collection, thus giving visitors the opportunity to admire their work in the future.