Marta Marques and Paulo Almeida were in a 1970s kind of mood, sparked by David Bowie on the cover of The Man Who Sold the World. “He’s lying on a brocade couch wearing a brocade dress in this really antique living room,” Marques said on a recent Zoom appointment. “And from there we started looking at this kind of androgynous fashion of the ’70s.” Naturally, they began experimenting with the antique fabric. “We started working with these brocades, like the kind you’d use for a couch or curtains, and it was very heavy stuff,” she recalled. To get around the weight of the fabric the designers opted instead to scan many of their fabrics and create their own patchworked printed jacquards, which they used on paneled circle skirts and extra-wide bell bottom trousers.
They zeroed in on the idea of antique and destroyed clothes, with sweaters and oversize T-shirts featuring artfully tattered holes that were also delicately embroidered with feathers, an embellishment the designers had worked with in the past. Rounding out the collection were louche Japanese denim bell bottoms, tops, and pieced-together dresses with frayed edges in various shades of washed blue and acid-washed pink and tan. A velvet turtleneck top with a slit at the chest and matching wide leg trousers was a cool take on the classic sweatsuit velvet separates. For evening, they indulged a desire for over-the-top elegance with a gorgeous, deep purple strapless trapeze gown straight out of a mid-century couture salon.