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The return of Marques Almeida to the London Fashion Week schedule is, for many, a highlight of this month’s Autumn/Winter 2024 shows.
Founded by Portuguese couple Marta Marques and Paulo Almeida, Marques Almeida rose to prominence in the mid-2010s with its signature raw denim pieces. But the brand left London during Covid, showing instead in Porto, the designers’ home country. Now, they’re back on the LFW show schedule on 19 February, with plans to expand direct-to-consumer channels and branch out into new markets such as Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
“The reality is that London is home,” says Almeida, who leads product design and development. “We started the brand in London, and most of our supporters and the people inspiring us are in London.” The designers are speaking to Vogue Business over Zoom from the Portuguese countryside, an hour’s drive from their home in Porto, with the sea and mountains in their sight line. They’re taking a 24-hour break with their two daughters over the local bank holiday before heading to London for the presentation.
Marques and Almeida met while studying at Portugal’s Citex fashion school and moved to London together in 2009. They studied at Central Saint Martins and launched their brand officially in 2011, showing under Lulu Kennedy’s non-profit Fashion East for two seasons. Their debut at LFW came under the Newgen banner with their SS14 collection, and soon after, they won the prestigious LVMH Prize in 2015.
Funded by the Portuguese Fashion Council, they showed in Paris for two seasons, for SS19 and Resort 2019, before returning to London for another three. And in March 2020, the couple were visiting their factories in Porto when the borders closed because of the pandemic — they’ve shown in Porto six times since.
Exploration and readjustment
The plan was always to return to London eventually, where they still have a team that works remotely — but they were waiting for the time to feel right. The intervening years have provided an opportunity for exploration and readjustment. “We were thinking about what this new iteration of Marques Almeida would be — it’s not like we took a break at all, we never stopped showing collections even during Covid,” says Marques, who leads the creative direction. “But there was clearly a sense that it’s time for us to figure out what the new stage is going to be like, and what it means to be an independent brand that’s over 10 years old.”
The result? For AW24, the brand is exploring themes of age and nostalgia, showing a collection of its signature grungy denim pieces alongside Renaissance-style heavy satin shirts with embroidered lace. “We’ve been playing around with these elegant historic references,” says Marques. “We explored the whole ’90s youth-culture look for so long, but for all of the harmful stereotypes we’ve been trying to break [through our casting], we still gravitated towards a younger look.” Now, they’re rethinking what “old” really looks like.
The models have grown up. While some familiar faces have been cast, the Marques Almeida girls are now in their thirties. Some are walking the show with their children (alongside Marques and Almeida’s own children), dressed in Marques Almeida childrenswear, a fast-growing category. Casting from the brand’s community has led to broader representation on the runway; Marques Almeida was an early mover in encouraging diversity across race and body shape on the catwalk back in the mid-2010s. “I was talking to some [models] who said, ‘my body’s not the same as it was four or five years ago’, and we said, great — come in whatever shape or size or age you are,” says Almeida.
Buyers are enthusiastic about the brand’s reappearance in London. “It’s very much a welcome return as we’re looking forward to seeing some designers break away from the quiet luxury trend that’s dominated the runways over the last few seasons,” says Heather Gramston, senior head of buying at Browns. “It’s also a statement in this challenging climate that speaks to the brand’s bold and fearless DNA and their commitment to their loyal customer.”
Running an independent brand
Over the past four years, Marques Almeida has diversified its business strategy. Among the highlights: the introduction of an upcycled ReM’Ade collection alongside a sustainability manifesto (2020), the launch of a magazine titled See-Through (2020), the addition of childrenswear (2021) and the creation of the ReM’Ade Foundation (2021), supporting local craftsmanship.
Diversification is a lot of work, however. “We have to put in 10 times the effort to get the same result we would have six or seven years ago,” says Marques. “Before Covid, we were doing two big collections a year that could sustain the business. We were dabbling in [DTC] e-commerce but none of that was really necessary because we were running on autopilot mode [maintaining the business without trying].”
The brand was also “heavily reliant” on wholesale in Europe, which presented a challenge as many of these marketplaces have struggled with profitability and adjusted their strategies and adapting to declining consumer spending, says Marques. In particular, aspirational customers are cutting back and the shift towards quiet luxury-shopping high net worth consumers has impacted the brand.
Direct-to-consumer channels have been growing “exponentially”, the designers say, though they declined to share the current DTC versus wholesale split. The US is the brand’s largest market, supported by a loyal customer base in the UK, but the designers are also eyeing expansion into new territories via wholesale partners in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Switzerland and northern Germany. “We haven’t touched new clients in years, so it’s amazing that there’s still that potential,” says Marques.
Part of the reason why DTC has been such a positive move for Marques Almeida is owing to the brand’s strong relationships with suppliers in Porto, many dating back 10 years. “When I say our suppliers are local, they’re literally at our doorsteps and we can drive between them in 15 minutes,” says Marques. “We keep an eye on what people are buying and we can turn around production in two or three weeks and restock based on demand, which also makes it more sustainable.”
Thanks to these Portuguese connections, the brand hasn’t been hit as hard by Brexit complications as other independent labels based solely in the UK. “We already had a Portuguese company set up before we moved the brand here to be able to export without all the damage that Brexit was doing to UK companies,” says Marques. “Our production was already here so we would have always faced a nightmare having to import it over to the UK and export it back to Europe.”
Through its Portuguese company, Marques Almeida was also positioned to access EU funds via the local government; these provided support for both studio space and mentoring.
Independent brands in the UK typically struggle when they reach a certain size — too big to tap into London’s range of emerging talent programmes, but often too small to make the jump onto an international stage. In June, Christopher Kane filed for administration, joining a generation of once-lauded British brands that have been forced to shut down, including Sibling, Nicholas Kirkwood, House of Holland, Meadham Kirchhoff and Raeburn.
A number of London-based independent designers who ran hot brands a decade ago have since folded. Vogue Business speaks to designers and execs about the lessons they learned and how brands can scale.
“Being an independent fashion brand is really hard,” acknowledges Marques. “London is an amazing place for talent and for new brands to start, but it is a struggle to keep the brands relevant and make sure cash flow stays level and to make sure the business sustains the creative side,” says Almeida.
The designers’ ability to work together and lean on their different skill sets has helped them weather the challenges, they say. “We’re lucky we have something most brands don’t: a two-person dynamic with different skill sets,” says Marques. “We’re lucky we can do that dance of running a business without it affecting how we work on the creative collections.”
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