M'A ROOTS PORTO

We invited 6 young designers and artists from Porto, who we've come to know and admire, to present their work alongside us in their show, celebrating the potential of a thriving City to embrace its communities and seeing through on their pledge to be a platform for positive change. 

“A commitment to engage, empower and honour the communities we exist in.” 
M’A Environmental and Social Responsibility Manifesto launched September 2020. 

‘For SS22 we come back to our roots in Porto, to new friends and to the mentors who saw us off over 10 years ago. It was the right time to look at how M’A can start the path into its future by supporting, empowering, and holding hands with the new generation.’ Marta Marques and Paulo Almeida. 

MARCELO ALMISCARADO (@marceloalmiscarado)

Marcelo Almiscarado is a fashion designer currently based in Porto. After finishing his degree in fashion design at ESAD Matosinhos, he participated in several competitions, having been the winner of the Fashion design competition organized by MODAPORTUGAL in 2019 and the winner of the Bloom competition in 2020, now presenting collections at Portugal Fashion's platform for young creatives, Bloom.
Fashion is the medium chosen by the designer to explore his aesthetic expression, and sometimes the pieces presented in the collections completely detach themselves from the practical sense associated
with clothing. Its aesthetic combines traditional and even religious codes that are subverted by pop and industrial references in an attempt to understand its place among these antagonistic environments. The manual and artisanal production techniques are usually combined with artificial materials and silhouettes, and his family cultural heritage present in all projects serves as a means of interpreting his identity.


ARIEIV


ARIEIV is a brand created by José Vieir, started at the end of his training at the Escola de Moda do Porto. The designer was an intern at the Portuguese brand HUGO COSTA, where he had the opportunity to monitor the development of the collection and present it at Paris Fashion Week in 2018. In that same year, he began presenting on the Bloom platform linked to the Portugal Fashion program, and later integrated the first edition of the FARFETCH X MODATEX course, where he embarked on the job market as a Stylist at FARFETCH. The ARIEIV brand focuses on the inclusion of genders, ethnicities and cultures and the creation in the studio with the philosophy of unique pieces with their manual singularity, avoiding the industrial process, fleeing the usual market. José Vieira focuses on sustainability and the integration of queer culture and gender free in his universe.

NANI CAMPOS (@nani_campos)

is an independent jewellery and fashion designer living and working between Porto and Berlin (?). NANI’s process starts with the sourcing of her materials, mostly from deadstock fabrics, second hand stores and waste deposits, and the product development follows. « Life gives and I transform » is her motto, as she designes and produces one-off units of jewellery and clothes with whatever she can find and recurring to alternative sewing techniques using crochet and braiding.

TILO (@_t.i.l.o)

is a brand and a graphic and textile research project based in Porto. Created by Patrícia Brito in 2019, TILO is a cross-disciplinary project between visual arts and design, which explores sustainability issues in the textile industry, asserting itself for producing exclusively with deadstock and resorting to embroidery and patchwork as visible mending techniques. TILO reinterprets the "repair" function of sewing, through saturated, frantic and spontaneous lines sewn on the machine to create a new sense and function for an obsolete piece, in a critical action on overproduction in the textile industry. A fundamental part of TILO’s work is the relationship within its own artistic community in the city of Porto. The last two collaborations were the collections developed for the independent labels Mera Label and Extended Records and the costumes of the audiovisual performance Abrupt (Dust Devices & Berru) presented at Passos Manuel and the performance exhibition ALBERT TANNAT AND 6 BOXERS presented at the artist-run space Pedreira in 2021.

REBECA LETRAS (@rebecaletrass)

are a queer non binary multidisciplinary artist in the fields of Ceramic, Performance, Experimental Education, Sculpture, Drawing and Design.
Rebeca fuse ceramic with performative happenings, making trash sculptural and sound experimental forms. Rebeca are now based at PEDREIRA (an artist-run residency and safe space/studio) where they run the ceramic studio and take part in the organization and overall production.
Their latest works are KERAMIK FASHION, a collaborative happening presented on July 2021 at ERMO DO CAOS and ALBERT TANNAT AND 6 BOXERS a performative exhibition event where they performed as a drag king former boxer. They are also a tattoo artist making handpoke and machine colorful pieces on beautiful people skin by the name BACK TO BEKA (@back_to_beka).

MANA.TERRA (@mana.terra)

is a textile creation and research project created by Susana Santos, visual artist and designer from Porto.
The first textile piece made by Susana was a backpack, sewn with a fishing needle and a bag of coffee beans, on top of a mountain in Cape Verde. In 2017, back in Porto, Susana launched the MANA.TERRA project - a sustainable laboratory for experimenting with bags and other small accessories.
Her work is inspired by craft techniques, sustainability and guided by an irrevocable sense of community. Therefore, the first steps of MANA.TERRA were again in Cape Verde, with the implementation of free sewing workshops with other artists such as Boubacar Faye, an incredible tailor from Dakar and grassroots organisations based in the city of Praia.
Susana's work flows from these experiences, it is an extension of her life and translated into an explosion of fabrics, colors and creativity.