What’s this, Marques Almeida going glam? All the long, slinky, leopard-spot evening looks in their fall pre-collection certainly read that way. It’s a bit of a surprise from designers who aren’t known for using a lot of print. On a Zoom call from their studio in Portugal, they were explaining that they’d felt like challenging themselves: “We wanted to forge into new, more grown-up, perhaps more elegant territory,” said Marta Marques. “While still owning what makes us, us.”
Well, there are plenty of things in this collection to pick out as pretty dressed-up eveningwear—not only the long, slim, traily animal print skirts, but also pouf-back taffeta dresses that seem to nod towards 1950s haute couture volumes. “It’s event dressing,” allowed Paolo Almeida, “but to us, there’s always an element of grunge in it.”
For that, he was pointing toward the distressed-deluxe contradiction inherent in the shredded-thread texture of the fil coupé fabric that also runs through the collection. Fil coupé is a weaving technique more often associated with expensive couture; here, Marques and Almeida have deployed its shaggy texture to give presence to what they call pajamas and add a witchy mystique to a black halter dress that’s photographed with its train flying.
Somehow, that chimes with the goth-y vibe that’s on the rise in many nooks and crannies in these dystopian times. It goes with corsets and bras as outerwear, which are represented here in the material Marques’ Almeida really has owned for a long time: denim, matched with this season’s iterations of their boyfriend jeans.