On March 5, 2020, within the opulence of Paços do Concelho, BÉHEN presented for the first time its first chapter, in the light of ModaLisboa and the world. This is the story — the stories — whose words sewed the pieces together.
I have left behind
the land of mangoes and tamarind
And have come to the land
of wild petunias
Mother,
in the desert
far
away
Morubai, song of the Jogi Nath Kalbelia tribe
A trunk full of stories, some Portuguese, others coming from distant lands touched by the sun. A trousseau that became a collection, with doilies, tablecloths and different types of bedspreads covered with time. A collection that has the world inside it, with Portugal as its soul. It's hard not to believe in fairy tales when the pieces were materialized by real-life fairies: the Aga Khan Foundation and Madalena Toscany atelier. Fairies who know what it's like to leave home behind them and go out with a suitcase full of cloths that resemble the colours and faces of those they didn't want to leave behind.
Chapter I — The Wedding collection is the beginning of a tale about the feminine universe that isn't pink, but the colour of struggle and melancholy. Nevertheless, it will never be a tale about loneliness, because it presents life as a celebration of unity and the strength of partnership. This was the woman's marriage to herself. Lex bouquet jewellery immortalized the purity of fruit and vegetables so that, as with the raw material of clothing, time never steals their beauty. Buketnaya lavka mimimi has built ephemeral shoes from fresh flowers, so that we never forget the fragility of what we have achieved. All the glass beads used in the pieces were made by hand by the women of the São Tomé and Príncipe Waste Recovery Cooperative, one by one, slowly, like the mother who plaits her daughter's hair.
