Portuguese Soul Issue 22

SPRING/SUMMER 2022

There are moments in life that define us. When we are confronted with the unexpected and tested to the limit. At these exceptional times, we tend to value the small things that are threatened, which we have so often taken for granted. Friends and family seem closer and we feel every hug with special intensity, the taste of wine sharpens our palate, that song or film that always takes us back to a lost childhood, or the sunset seems more radiant than ever before. At those times, we especially value our roots.

In Portugal, we have memory, we value in particular our origins and we are often blessed with a genuine, perhaps unique, feeling which we call saudade (homesickness, longing), rooted in a nation with nine centuries of history that one day dared to reconfigure the idea of the world.

In this edition of Portuguese Soul we go back to the roots. To our roots. That tell us so much and define us so much. We focus on Porto, the true epicentre of Portuguese fashion, which, step by step, is consolidating its position. More than 6,700 companies located within a 50-square-kilometre radius, responsible for 160,000 jobs, make Porto one of the main hubs of fashion on a European scale. There you can find textile, clothing, footwear and fashion accessory companies, jewellery and watchmaking companies with a strong tradition, often based on several generations of knowledge, but which had the ambition to invest and innovate, and are now appreciated all over the world. It is this journey, the journey of a lifetime, that we invite you to take with us.

In this Portuguese Soul we also sponsor the “Solo” project by Frederico Martins, one of Portugal’s most notable photographers, who has been with us since day one.

— Paulo Gonçalves, Editor-in-Chief

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