The Cape Verde who stopped Moda Lisboa with a look born in a dream
Keira Santos stood out at the event with a paranoid look, with a palette of warm colors, between red and burgundy.
When Keira Santos found a two-metre-long canvas for just €6 at a Benfica fair, she didn't think twice about buying it. I had already envisioned the pants I could make from that piece of fabric, the perfect piece for a school project. -I didn't know it would become so much more than that.
“I had a lot of fabric left over and I thought I could do something else with it, but I had no ideas. So one night I lay down and dreamed about the design. “As soon as I woke up I started drawing it,” the 20-year-old Cape Verdean tells NiT.
The design was very much on my mind, and I knew I wanted to create a balloon room, but I didn't know “what to put inside to make it work.” After several attempts, he found the perfect solution – which he did not reveal to NiT because “a creator never reveals his secrets” – and fortunately, “it all ended up working out very well.”
Thus the idea came in an unexpected dream, mixing a surreal touch with unusual shapes. From this appearance was born the look that stopped the last day of the 63rd edition of ModaLisboa, on Saturday 9 March, at the Pátio da Galé.
The look of the fashion student at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Lisbon, with a palette of warm colors, between red and burgundy, with a striped effect, was one of the most eye-catching looks. The top is more bare, with a simple bow at the center of the chest, but a wide balloon skirt protrudes from the waist. Underneath, he wore the pants he had originally made for school work. The look was completed with a huge hat made of the same fabric.
The interest in fashion emerged several years ago, but Keira Santos only recently began creating her own pieces. “In Cape Verde, fashion is not as visible, I've seen it on TV and in movies, but it has always captivated me,” he admits.
She was still living in the African country when she decided to make a skirt and top to take to a friend's birthday in 2021. The “very basic” result marked the beginning of a passion that has only grown.
About a year ago he moved to Portugal where he began studying fashion at the University of Lisbon's School of Architecture to pursue his dream, even after he thought about giving it up several times. “For a long time I thought about taking another course. My parents asked me to study something else, but no matter how much I tried to escape, I always returned to this world,” he says. He admits that the chosen outfit “was the first” of this type he had created. The result couldn't be better.
Click through the gallery to discover other looks that stood out the most on ModaLisboa's final day.
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