Interdisciplinary artist very enthusiastic about costume for performance, textile design and imagining alternative fashion models.

A bit about me!

I was born in Cascais, Portugal.

As a child, under the guidance of my aunt, I gathered materials from my surroundings — buttons, scraps of fabric or magazines, beads, and natural elements such as branches, pebbles, leaves, clay, and deer horns — and incorporated them in our creations. We painted on canvases, clothing, and rocks; adorned furniture and matchboxes with collage; and made necklaces from riverbank clay. The joy was in filling empty spaces and experimenting across formats.

This early artistic expression nurtured a sense of belonging between realities and disciplines, that resonates deeply with costume design and less with fashion. Now my practice as a garment and textile designer spans costume, performance, film, knitwear and set design - I was never one to focus on one thing ahah.

Inspired by Yoko Ono pacifist art, Virginia Woolf fluid words, yoga practice, psychoanalysis sessions, history books and the quiet intelligence of Nature, I am drawn to questions about how we relate to what we wear and why. Why does a painting gain meaning by hanging on a wall, while that same image wrapped on a body is often perceived as less valuable? That is a question that highly motivates my work. And might fashion's disposability stem from a weak relationship with our bodies? I try to answer this through working between mediums — i like asking people to wonder: is this a dress or is it a painting? trying to restore value to the body as a site of meaning.

I find it unnatural to work with virgin materials, gravitating instead towards reusing fabrics and unconventional objects, treating them as living entities that grow alongside me.

A turning point came during the Be@t x Lisbon Fashion Week sustainable innovation programme, where collaborating with industry and academia clarified my desire to work beyond the linear format of a runway show. Filming a performance for that project, I realised that with simple lighting and no sound, a body moving through space can ignite such profound emotions in an audience. It was then I understood that the costume and performance designer focuses on feeling, while the fashion designer has to inevitably think about selling — and that performance and film would become my primary languages.

I am an incoming student at the Royal College of Art, where I will further develop my textile and costume practice for performance making. I carry with me a reverence for Nature, a love for human connection, and the wonder Portugal's landscapes have instilled in me since childhood — along with a firm intention to place the Portuguese textile industry at the heart of conversations about a more sustainable future.