A Portuguese Dance

Words Natal­ie Yuksel

As the front row twitch­es with antic­i­pa­tion for the show to start, the first look is not as expect­ed. Instead of a mod­el for­ma­tion of sway­ing hips, we are met with a man, walk­ing, jit­ter­ing in move­ment, almost hob­bling, our curios­i­ty is piqued. Is this some inde­pen­dent design­er? No, what pro­ceeds is a hybrid of art and fash­ion, with a con­tem­po­rary dance pre­sen­ta­tion, chore­o­graphed by Beat­riz Mira, with mod­els danc­ing in uni­son, danc­ing clus­ters, arrang­ing for­ma­tion, climb­ing up walls, and piv­ot­ing on the spot. It is at the same time, emo­tion­al, cap­ti­vat­ing and cer­tain­ly unex­pect­ed. But this isn’t the show of an upcom­ing design­er. This is actu­al­ly a pre­sen­ta­tion of Por­tuguese Soul, a com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel rep­re­sent­ing the Por­tuguese footwear indus­try, an ini­tia­tive of APICCAPS, show­cas­ing a selec­tion of Por­tuguese shoes from the brands and design­ers they work with.

APICCAPS is the beat­ing pulse of the Por­tuguese footwear indus­try, act­ing as its nation­al indus­try asso­ci­a­tion and inter­na­tion­al pro­mo­tion body. It does not man­u­fac­ture footwear itself, but rep­re­sents and coor­di­nates the sec­tor, includ­ing pro­duc­ers, brands, and com­po­nent com­pa­nies. It also sup­ports indus­tri­al devel­op­ment, inno­va­tion and export strat­e­gy for the ecosys­tem. Sup­port­ed by var­i­ous Euro­pean Union funds, APICCAPS is an asso­ci­a­tion with mul­ti­ple func­tions, which include inno­va­tion and invest­ing in tech­nol­o­gy, for exam­ple, devel­op­ing intri­cate 3‑D embroi­dery print­ing and inno­va­tion in mate­ri­als, such as devel­op­ing soft biodegrad­able fab­rics and veg­etable dyes which are kinder to the environment.

There is also a trans­mis­sion ele­ment to what APICCAPS do — going into schools, from pri­ma­ry through to sec­ondary school. Shar­ing knowl­edge and entic­ing cre­ativ­i­ty by assign­ing projects, such as, cre­ate a shoe using only sus­tain­able items. Aside from the fun ele­ment, this process is impor­tant as it informs the stu­dents of the vari­ety of dif­fer­ent jobs that exist inthe footwear indus­try, from tech­nol­o­gy to oper­a­tions, in turn piquing the inter­est of the future tal­ent of the Por­tuguese footwear industry.

APICCAPS also works close­ly with inde­pen­dent design­ers and man­u­fac­tur­ers, offer­ing guid­ance and sup­port across both cre­ative and pro­duc­tion process­es, mean­ing a design­er can come with an exist­ing idea or no clear direc­tion at all and be sup­port­ed through the Por­tuguese footwear indus­try net­work, from con­cept to production.