They are not predictable and that is probably what sets them apart. They dress uncoordinated colors, patterns, fabrics and prints: one could say that the style of the portuguese girl It’s going to be a painting, only for some strange reason the result seems to fit. It is happy, it is fresh, it is very personal and it distances itself from that imposed sobriety that fashion trends have been idealizing for several seasons. Maybe that’s why the Portuguese girl’s style has thousands of videos on TikTok (some with millions of views) and her shocking aesthetic works as an eye-catcher.
On any given day, the Portuguese girl that social networks have turned into a label wears wide pants with thick orange and white stripes with a top small rhombuses in red and pink, for example, combined with a large, bright blue jacket, sky-colored ballet flats, a small green bag with fringes and studs, and several necklaces. Her hair is tied back with a clip that has a huge flower on it, and extravagant, small-framed sunglasses complete the outfit. This is not a random example, but one of the looks most viewed (almost seven million times) about this trend catapulted into the TikTok stratosphere: the protagonist is Vicky Montanari, one of the exponents of the phenomenon How to Dress like a Portuguese Girl.
Montanari lives in Lisbon, is 26 years old and has the ability to mix the wrong patterns in the right way. Another day she will wear a long checkered country dress and on top she will add a knitted vest with colorful stripes, or she will opt for a short, wide dress with a print that looks like an animal in black and pink with large collars that she will shelter under a coat with huge printed flowers in lime green that could be used for skiing, some short white socks with lace and some Tabi ballet flats from Margiela. She wears winter fabrics in summer, summer colors in winter: she blows up any order or convention and, curiously, has thus achieved a recognizable style.
Two things can quickly be deduced from her way of dressing: Montanari is interested in the artistic (something that is reflected in the way of constructing outfits of many of the Portuguese fashion prescribers on the rise on social networks, who share a taste for art, craftsmanship, interior design and aesthetic references to other eras and cultural movements) and fashion is a fun way to explore your identity. A few weeks ago we saw her as a guest at some shows at Paris Fashion Week.
With more than 100,000 followers, Mafalda Patricio appeared for the first time in the paper pages of the Portuguese edition of Vogue 10 years ago, and since then his style has been revered in magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar, elle either Glamor, and her colorful and bohemian style is common in Street Style photographs at Copenhagen Fashion Week. Some media call her “the Portuguese Blanca Miró.”
Mafalda began her studies in architecture, changed them to design and today she dedicates herself to creating content on social networks, where in addition to her personal profile she has a second one, @m.jour, where she shares images of inspiration in industrial design, photography, fashion and lifestyle. In her daily style we find the basic garments that define the look of the Portuguese girl: striking shoes (preferably ballet flats, moccasins or light sneakers), special accessories (printed scrunchies, brightly colored bags, long mid-season coats with special details, printed (and even padded) pants and many clothes with stripes of Colors. Sunglasses with whimsical shapes are also another of her signs. And the Portuguese girl does not dress, but creates outfits. There is a difference.
Sofia de Moser Leitão, originally from Lisbon, lives in Paris. At the age of 18, she began working as a model and seemed destined to be involved in fashion: after graduating from the Lisbon University of Letters and completing a master’s degree in cultural management, she entered as an intern at Vogue Portugal, but it was a ceramics course that gave her a new aspect to his career: today it is 50% influencer50% ceramist.
From her personal profile on Instagram she shares the liveliness of her outfits with 60,000 followers and from her professional profile she shows the ceramic pieces she designs: vases with whimsical shapes with colored stripes, coffee cups with irregular shapes or fun egg cups, decorative figures with Shaped like ballerinas with bracelets, they are all colorful and have a naïve touch that is very reminiscent of the Portuguese aesthetic that has become so fashionable. She sells them on-linein Parisian ephemeral stores and in boutiques such as the French brand Soeur or the shoe brand Carel, along with the Parisian Madeleine.
This aesthetic has points in common with another fashion iconography, that of the Danes. The use of bright colors, loose clothing and styles that are as thoughtful as they are comfortable are other features that can be detected in the profile of Caetana Botelho Afonso, a 21-year-old Psychology student with over 400,000 followers on Instagram, and whose style has served as a reference to illustrate the portuguese girl in international editions of specialized fashion magazines such as L’Officiel, Harper’s Bazaar either elle. The Portugal-Denmark connection is constant in this aesthetic and Caetana, in fact, has just traveled to the Danish capital to attend some shows of its fashion week (Marimekko, Baum und Pferdgarten) and there she has combined a multicolored knitted jacket thick with a psychedelic print midi skirt, or a brown distressed leather jacket with a long black poplin skirt, a white openwork blouse, a belt and studded clogs, pearl necklaces and bows, and a large leather print bag of cow. Among the emoticons that she receives the most in comments about her outfits are faces with heart-shaped eyes and flames of fire.
Another Portuguese woman recently photographed in Copenhagen is Rita Montezuma (25-year-old Lisbon native, with 263,000 followers on Instagram). There she has found some clothes that she can easily adapt to the aesthetic portuguese girl, such as a floral-print and quilted jacket from the Sissel Edelbo brand, which she wore over a blue striped minidress and beige wide-leg pants. She was a front-row guest at the Marimekko, Skalstudio and Operasport shows, and one of her most adored outfits among her followers consists of a green mesh hat decorated with shells, a pink and white striped quilted jacket with feathers on the cuffs, pants of different stripes and shades of pink also with feathers, white socks and silver square-toe ballet flats.
One of the most followed Portuguese girls on Instagram is Sofia Coelho, with almost a million followers. Born in Porto, she has her own podcast, Undressedwhere she talks with her Portuguese friend Ines Silva (@irisloveunicorns on Instagram, with almost another million followers) about fashion, trends and the things her friends ask them. followers. Among his most repeated pieces lately is a long plaid skirt with a tartan print in shades of brown that he bought second-hand and that he has combined with pants underneath, a tweed sports jacket or futuristic Puma sneakers. She has a very similar one in gray tones that she wears with a large leather jacket (one of the garments that, according to herself, in an episode of Undressedis an essential basic, and it must always have “a vintage and expensive, with the perfect cut”).
The rise of the profiles of Portuguese women is undeniable and also seems unstoppable. His way of dressing encourages individual style and encourages experimentation, through unexpected combinations, and he is recovering something that seemed dormant among the minimalist, silent and discreet aesthetics that the same social networks have been championing for months: having fun dressing
