“Quando eu morrer, voltarei para buscar os instantes que vivi junto ao mar.”
“When I die, I’ll come back to look for the moments I lived by the sea.”
A poem by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andersen
Spoken by Maria Betania in Canto de Oxum
Spring Summer 2024 beholds a celebration Brazilian culture, music, and the designer’s connection with nature and Sealife.
In the 1970’s, the popular music scene in Brazil, was the protagonist of an air of change and liberation that, although incredibly connected to the country’s tradition and nature origins, was also a catalyst for freedom and forward thinking.
The music and artistic scene of this decade helped untie long untouched knots in Brazil’s society, increasing the visibility of social groups like LGBTQ+ community and empowered women that were resisting the norms of tradition.
Female artists and musicians such as Gal Costa, Maria Bethania and Rita Lee, were the introductory inspiration behind Marques ‘ Almeida’s latest Spring Summer 2024 collection - from their show looks, everyday 70’s outfits and everything in between.
But, for Marta Marques and Paulo Almeida, intrinsically connected to Brazil’s culture and their own, is the connection to nature and particularly the sea.
Unexpected color references come from the underwater world as well as incredibly organic shapes, vast flounce silhouettes and wrinkled, “nature like” textures.
Drill and Denim get hand dyed treatments in a stain like way, Cotton is worked with cascading frills and layers that resemble deconstructed “Baiana” costumes, and Denim gets chiffon inserts that play with transparency and opacity, adding a languid feel to the very structured material.
Perhaps the most notable, a range of structured satin, materializing in bright colors of turquoise, orange, pink and seaweed green, whilst organic cape like flounce shapes extend the human silhouette into new proportions.
As with every M’A collection, perhaps the truly impactful aspect, is that wherever the inspiration comes from, it goes through a very instinctive and unique lenses of effortless and raw expression of luxury and fashion.
The cascading frill shirt dresses are paired with hand dyed splattered boyfriend jeans and the satin cape like top gowns are styled in the most quietly defiant way that you can picture them dragging on the floor of any sidewalk.
Instinctively, everything that comes out of the M’A community wardrobe, feels precious and unique because it feels raw and lived in and full of soul.
Spring Summer 2024 fuses Marques ’ Almeida’s unapologetically raw and effortless defiant energy with under water magnificence and the power of a liberated society, seen through the lenses of Brazil’s most iconic 70’s breakthrough artists and musicians.
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