The last time I covered Marques’Almeida for Vogue Runway was immediately after its LVMH Prize win in June 2015. Since then, Marta Marques reported, she and Paulo Almeida have had multiple fashion lives. They rode the LVMH buzz in London and Paris before seeing their business buffeted by Brexit, Covid, Trump’s tariffs, and, most recently, instability in the Middle East. These slings and arrows were partly what brought them home to Portugal, where as well as staying resolutely behind the label they have been teaching and mentoring upcoming designers. It was Portugal Fashion, through its internationalization program, that supported their appearance at Milan Fashion Week this season.
“We’re still an independent brand, and have been for over 15 years now,” Marques said. “So we’ve had to adapt. But I think that has served us well. I think our essence is still there, but we’re open to discovering new possibilities so that we can keep doing what we do.”
Back in 2015, that essence was about reproducing in their garments the sense of thrilling disruption they detected in 1990s The Face editorials: today Marques was still talking about those editorials. The first look that emerged into Palazzo Isimbardi this afternoon might have been plucked from a Marques’Almeida rail back in the day: that peplum, that slouch, that attitude. It was in denim, of course, the material that first defined the label and then threatened to confine perceptions of it.
There was plenty of denim here worth dwelling on. The masterfully restrained drape and darting in look 4 added up to a paradigm dress, while the garment-dyed pieces exploited the irregularity and depth of color that has always suited their work. Another part of this collection concerned what Marques, with a fleeting wince, conceded is “occasion wear.” The cool girl whose wardrobe they helped define in the middle of the last decade has not disappeared, but her life has moved on. Here came bias-cut dresses thick with ruffles, jacquards twisted and draped across the body, peplum tops, bows erupting at the shoulder, lace tailoring, palazzo trousers, and great explosions of ostrich feather worn on the head that pushed some passages towards Vegas but which also seemed gently self-satirizing.
This could sometimes have tipped into froufrou but for an instinct to rough up whatever seemed too close to neat resolution. Trains dragged. Proportions skewed backwards. Hemlines tilted. Shoes were sometimes far tougher than the looks they were matched with. It was fun to watch. If Marques and Almeida are able to return to the Milan schedule next season the Camera Della Moda should definitely promote them to earlier in the week: this was way too good a collection to show after so many bench-dwellers had left for Paris.
