The fashion of the most beautiful imperfection paraded at ModaLisboa. Denim pieces that looked like shorts but were tied to the bottom of the pants with a thin ribbon of fabric, leaving the knees exposed, or models with lipstick running down the cheeks were seen on the Portuguese catwalk. You had to look closely to realize that those anomalous details were actually errors “made by artificial intelligence and which I shaped in the collection,” says José Sobral after the presentation of the capsule collection he has created for the Lion of Porches brand. .
Sobral is one of the emerging talents who have been on display again this March at fashion week in the Portuguese capital. He is also one of the precursors of the use of AI in the creative process of fashion and in 2023 he was the winner of the first edition of AI Fashion Week in New York. Now he has shown in Lisbon this collaboration of his brand paatiff and Lion of Porches, an urban, youthful and somewhat transgressive workwear proposal.
“For me, artificial intelligence is a tool that contributes a lot to fashion, it helps us accelerate the creation process, it is a great boost because it allows us to visualize a collection and repeat or change it in a week. But the human touch is still there, in every decision, is my vision. It is a very different way of working in fashion. For example, in this Lion of Porches collection the AI ??never dominated the process, it was a dialogue, explains Sobral. “I told him: ‘let’s do this now’, ‘the color doesn’t apply like that’; We have to enter data so that in the end what we really want appears,” explains Sobral.
And the result is summarized in unique pieces with a young, minimalist and relaxed style, in a ready-to-wear approach where denim and cotton are key elements. The line inspired by workwear clothing proposes a Modern Bed Designs with oversized garments, over work shirts, ultra-cropped and deconstructed cut shirts. There are also graphic t-shirts that pay tribute to Junya Watanabe, one of the main mentors in the redesign of work clothing and to whom Sobral winks with verses from his love poems written on some garments. The collection is dyed in red, white and blue tones and the red strips stand out in most looks, inspired by the train tracks that connect Lisbon with Porto.
“We have achieved a collection that has the Lion of Porches DNA, but recoded into new materials. “They are not just any looks, they are garments with our identity,” corroborates Juan del Barrio, creative director of the men’s line of the Portuguese brand that has been strongly inspired by the classic British language and that now, with this capsule line, aims to reach a more contemporary, urban and experimental audience.
“Although it sometimes misinterprets our requests, artificial intelligence allows us to generate many ideas and also avoid textile waste, since the waste is all virtual, because it can produce many images of the looks and only bring into production the ones you like, for example. Therefore, it generates more sustainable fashion and that is what we have seen today on the catwalk,” emphasizes Ricardo Jordão Fernandes, member of the management team and son of the founder of the Portuguese brand.
Lion of Porches is present in more than 15 markets around the world and in 2023 it had a turnover of 50 million euros. With a presence in El Corte Inglés, it has 150 points of sale in Spain, including its flagship store in the Madrid neighborhood of Salamanca. Lion of Porches and its cybernetic dialogue was the protagonist among the 18 designers who exhibited their proposals at the 62nd edition of ModaLisboa for three days and under the motto “For Good” at the Pátio da Galé.