Portugal Fashion Week | Susana Bettencourt

Dear readers,

born in the Azores islands, Susana Bettencourt is one of the emerging designer of Portugal. The collection she presented last week during Portugal Fashion is lying between tribal prints and glitch design, between nature and digital.

The abundance of the prints and perhaps a sort of redundancy is offset by the various shapes and silhouettes the young designer has created. An urban and easy to wear set of garments for girls with sporty details (zippers, tech-fabrics…), large sleeves and long slitted skirts.

Education

« My professors at Central Saint Martins told us that everyone can be a designer, so we need to bring something new. They show me where my strength is, mine is handwork, so they push me in. »

Inspiration

« My new collection is a closing of a cycle of 4 collections.

Since two years i’ve been working on the contrast between nature and digital. For this collection I focus on the texture of the leaf, the trees, the sea, the waves… If you look on a digital point of view all colours have changed, the sea is green, the green turns yellow… »

Craftmanship and digital fashion

« I made all the work by myself from the handwork to the prints using digital softwares.

I try to bring back to life the craftmanship as it connect more with nature. There is a mix of techniques, the knitwear handwork, the embroideries and some very old technique used by old ladies.

Craft can be digital, but we still have a lot of years to go before everyone can understand that digital can be a lot of crafting. Some of my garments or some digital jacquards takes months to develop. »