Tiago Manaïa: "Success can be many things. A writer friend of mine often says that fame has no taste or smell so it's an illusion."

The goal of “Thinking Fashion” is to think about fashion in a transversal way. Its importance, the players, the search for national and international relevance, even the way it can change people’s lives.

Over the next weeks, “Thinking Fashion” will appear in the form of a digital interview. A selection of thinkers will be put to the test. The result is the sum of several reflections and perspectives on fashion, this dynamic and multidimensional organism by nature.

Thus, we leave the digital interview to Tiago Manaïa, journalist.

The introductions are done. Now, all you have to do is think.

1. We cannot talk about fashion without talking about trends. Do you follow any?

I always follow the work of French documentary filmmaker Loic Prigent, for me it’s a must. In his reports, he can interview either the seamstress who lives locked up in an atelier without seeing the light of day, or the front row star that the flashes illuminate – they have the same airtime. There is something human (and often inhuman) about the dozens of fashion shows he covers during fashion weeks. He catches it all… The tension that invades the streets of the cities and the backstage dramas of small and big brands. It seems to me that Loic’s work speaks to the state of the world through fashion…. and in the midst of that you realize what trends you may or may not follow.

I did an interview with him for the Portuguese Vogue in 2010, at that time he was already calling attention to the voracity of the big brands. They were beginning to demand a crazy pace of work from creators, announcing the fear of emptiness, as if creation was about to run out, many designers were trying to renew themselves through countless lines and shows that were interspersed every two months, sometimes less (men’s collections, croisière, prêt-a-porter, couture…). Alexander McQueen had just committed suicide when I interviewed him… He was warning about this pressure that capitalism was imposing on creation.

2. Does success in fashion come from work, luck, or some combination of factors like one in a million?

What is success? It’s a word that has intrigued me for decades. I think the most important thing is for a designer to not compromise the values of the brand that he or she has built even if it grows at a crazy rate. There are stories of brands with queer creators that when they start selling to homophobic countries (like China) they go to the point of camouflaging what made their brand’s DNA…

Still, and trying to answer the question, I believe in talent and the encounters that can help that talent to be enhanced. I remember what Carine Roitfeld did to Tom Ford at Gucci, or Irene Silvagni (former director of Vogue Paris) who gave Yamamoto’s creation a boost. Here in Portugal in the 80’s, I remember Manel Reis and the relationship he had with Manuela Gonçalves …. In the fashion shows they used to do in Frágil.

You can be successful and present to a mini-market, be recognized in that circuit and make a living creating costumes for shows, for example… Success can be many things. A writer friend of mine says that fame has no taste or smell, so it’s an illusion.

3. To see their work recognized, the designers need the immateriality of advice or people who buy their clothes?

I think I start answering this in the previous question. Recognition doesn’t always come with profit. There are many ways to create and make fashion. You can create a dialogue with a small community and mark an era, a city, a neighborhood.

4. Some say that fashion is an art form. But there are those who argue that it is a minor art. Is everyday life the enemy of contemplation?

I only believe in an everyday life lived with art. When I see brands like Supreme use Nan Goldin’s photographs on their T-shirts I find an urge to contemplate.

The drawings of the artist Keith Haring have been reproduced for years by giant fast fashion (and other) brands, thus supporting his foundation that has been fighting since 1990 (the date Keith died) to find solutions and prevention regarding HIV.

5. Why do some Portuguese designers find it so difficult to make a living from their main profession?

It’s hard to live in a country where culture and arts or crafts are so poorly treated. It should start in education, children should be instigated to create, and especially it shouldn’t happen in big centers only…. The amount of people who live in remote areas and never have access to a chance of creation is frightening…They really don’t have access to culture.

Television news and information should talk about culture like they talk about soccer…

6. In what ways can the industry approach author fashion? Or should the path be taken the other way around?

I don’t think there is only one way. I think it’s unfair when the industry steals concepts of creation from authors’s fashion…

If a project is really coherent it can fulfill its objectives without copying or going over what we know to be basic human values. The industry has to be creative, to bet on teams that do it with originality, they have the means for that.

Authors are poets, they have to be protected.

7. If you put together five or six pieces from a fast fashion store you can buy one piece from some Portuguese designers, which has more quality and is often unique. Is there shame, laziness or lack of interest in buying Portuguese?

There are distribution problems still… Things have changed with online but it is still for a niche.

There is more and more talk about Portuguese brands, I feel that in that sense things might be changing. Even in this tourist flux that invaded the big cities in Portugal, you feel that the more educated traveler comes looking for what is original and wants to buy local.

8. Has sustainability changed the fashion paradigm?

I would say that the industry has taken over some codes, tries to communicate an awareness that in the case of some giants will never make sense. The fashion paradigm might change when it stops whitewashing the discourse. The media also have a responsibility in this.

9. Many people want to go to fashion events in Portugal. 95% of those same people have never bought Portuguese fashion. What will be the interest then?

It can all start at a good party or event. Let’s think it can be the trigger for something deeper.

Andy Warhol used to say that the best party is the one you weren’t invited to… So, parties or events with few invitations… The buzz has to start somehow.

10. Does it still make sense to have Fashion Weeks in the traditional format?

I want to believe so. Just like film festivals. At fashion weeks there is a lot of information between professionals that crosses paths…. And the energy of being in a tangible place is irreplaceable, feeling the room of a live show is not the same as watching a show online… the looks, the hierarchies, and even the situations that are socially awkward give a buzz to the space.

11. Because of a pandemic there was a growth of digital. Did the physical stores had to close to invest in online stores?

I have never bought clothes online. I’m short, it’s hard to tell what will look good on me or not… the idea of receiving something that I will have to send back bores me deeply. For me buying clothes is about being in a store, talking to the person selling, feeling the space.

12. How can you think about fashion in Portugal?

Information is now global. Even so, at the time when there were only magazines and no internet, you already had thinking coming up here. The government hadn’t yet invested in platforms like fashion weeks… You didn’t have schools…. We can think fashion if there is an effort made in that direction… That comes from the top, from the government.

13. Is there a deliberate “culture of alienation” in relation to the achievements of Portuguese designers abroad?

It’s a mix…On the one hand you talk about the creators that are succeeding abroad, and at the same time there is a kind of distancing… This is changing, let’s believe it. Everything is valid, all paths are possible.