Ana Margarida Feijão to unveil her ‘Liberdade é Nome de Mulher’ collection at Lisbon’s CUPRA City Garage

After her performative happening at Palacete Gomes Freire last Thursday, October 2, as part of Lisbon Fashion Week, Ana Margarida Feijão is preparing to present her collection titled “Liberdade é Nome de Mulher” (Freedom is a Woman’s Name) next Thursday, October 9, in an exhibition of “wearable sculptures that fuse fashion, art and social critique”, according to CUPRA City Garage, located at 64 Rua Áurea, in the heart of Lisbon’s Baixa district, where the event will take place at 19:30.

“Ana Margarida Feijão brings together fashion, art and social critique through wearable sculptures that explore themes such as identity, femininity and tradition,” explained CUPRA on its website. “Inspired by old Portuguese photographs and women’s social experiences, her pieces arise from cultural and emotional research. She employs conventional methods alongside experimental techniques, working with materials such as handmade fabrics moulded as sculptural pieces, leather and draped silks, creating exaggerated forms,” CUPRA added.

“Her creations defy convention and assert themselves as works of art. A love of the handmade and the time devoted to the creative process are at the heart of her practice, resulting in pieces that celebrate the strength, memory and intimacy of the artisanal gesture.”

The collection, first unveiled at Palacete Gomes Freire, is inspired by the RTP documentary series “Nome Mulher” by Maria Antónia Palla and Antónia de Sousa, drawing on the “stories of Portuguese women in the period after April 25, 1974. Real stories, often forgotten, of those who lived the promise of freedom in a country still stuck in old habits,” said ModaLisboa.

“Margarida weaves these memories together with those of the women who raised her — women from the south, from the countryside, women of perseverance — and with her own experience as a Portuguese woman who inherited a democracy, yet is still marked by patriarchal legacies.”

The Algarve-born fashion designer studied at Parsons School of Design and at Central Saint Martins in London, after graduating from the Faculty of Architecture in Lisbon.

“Her work lives between art and fashion, with a strong element of social critique, exploring the roles assigned to women over time,” said ModaLisboa.

The ModaLisboa website added that the wearable-art designer distinguishes herself by “developing sculptural pieces inspired by historical dress and reinterpreted with a contemporary eye.”

In New York, Ana Margarida Feijão was part of designer Melitta Baumeister’s team between 2022 and 2024, an “experience that allowed her to deepen her command of sculptural form and innovative garment construction techniques”, said the Lisbon catwalk organisation about the designer based in this ‘city that never sleeps’, where she “develops her personal project with a conceptual approach that offers a space for reflection on memory, the body and the complexity of the female experience.”

Her graduate collection was presented at New York Fashion Week in 2024.