When Portuguese designers, Paulo Almeida and Marta Marques joined forces to create their collaborative womenswear label, Marques’Almeida in 2011, the result was electric: deconstructed acid wash denim with a Nineties youth code aesthetic composed a collection which was undoubtedly the utmost inventive use of denim the fashion world had seen in a long while.

Now, 18 months and four collections later, Marta and Paulo are still redefining the boundaries of denim-ware design whilst effectively introducing other fabrics along the way: Most recently for S/S ‘13 the pair presented us with traces of light weight cottons and linens which too were given the label’s signature fabric-distressing treatment.

Following a successful showcase at London Fashion Week in September (their first season as celebrated NewGen winners), Twin caught up with the design-duo to find out more…

Your work is inspired by Nineties youth culture – what is so special about this era for you?
We have been obsessed with it since we started our MA when we began exploring youth code dressing and what it means. We’ve been drawn to teenagers and how they dress with a particular focus on the late Nineties and early Noughties. It’s a very instinctive way of researching as we were growing up as teenagers ourselves during that period so we’ve been looking back to all of our own personal references, which hopefully makes it really authentic and really fun too!

Why did you initially decide to focus on denim as the foundation of your label’s signature?
It stemmed from our initial exploration into young sub-cultural style. We researched all we could and there were always a couple common elements – denim and t-shirts. We couldn’t run away from it.

If your design aesthetic were a song what would it sound like?
‘Drinking in LA’ by Bran van 3000 or Fiona Apple’s ‘Fast As You Can’

Who are your heroes?
Rei Kawakubo and Helmut Lang

How does working as duo affect the creative process?
It’s hard and insanely fun at the same time! It’s hard because there’s really no compromise as neither of us are really capable of that, so there’s a lot of back and forth and lots of discussions about things, but then there are really instinctive moments where we’re both on the same page and don’t need to say a word! It’s so much more fun than doing it alone and it is also what we think makes our product really new; it’s the combination of two really different uncompromising aesthetics into one strong point of view.

You have worked closely with Opening Ceremony in the past – are there any other exciting collaborations coming up in the near future?
There might be… 🙂 Let’s hope so – we love collaborations!

marquesalmeida.com

Tags: Marques Almeida, opening ceremony