VIVA CARMINHO

Photography by Ulrike Rindermann

Styling by Caroline Issa

At the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon this past June, fado singer Carminho walked the Max Mara runway – a concrete walkway set in water dotted with water plants and reeds – at their resort show. It was the culmination of a collaboration between Carminho and Max Mara’s creative director, Ian Griffiths, that also saw them work together on the show’s soundtrack with New York legend DJ Johnny Dynell. Ian and Carminho were inspired by mid-20th-century activist and poet Natália Correia, who was at the centre of Lisbon society under the dictatorship and scandalised critics with her 1965 Anthology of Erotic and Satirical Portuguese Poetry. Correia wore pencil skirts and tailored trousers, simply cut items that Griffiths replicated in elegant runway looks.

The night before she walked the runway, Carminho gave a heart-stopping performance at the event’s opening dinner, introducing many of the attendees to fado: music with melancholic, lilting melodies and lyrics often about the sea, perhaps because it was the country’s maritime proletariat – sailors, bohemians and dock workers – who kept the music alive in taverns down the country’s coastal cities. The genre’s unique expression of love and loss speaks to the importance of keeping history alive, as well as the care that must be taken in the act of creation. TANK talked to Carminho and Ian Griffiths about working together, sharing values and saying “no” to temptation.

Caroline Issa Ian, how did Carminho end up on your mood board?
Ian Griffiths  I came to Lisbon and invited Carminho out for dinner. It wasn’t just the two of us, but even so, it felt a bit like a blind date, sitting opposite each other. I started to talk around the subject and Carminho said, “You know, I’ve never worked with a brand.” And I thought, I’ve got to be really impressive – this is like an exam. One of Caminho’s first questions to me was, “What is the difference between Spain and Portugal?” And I said, “Spain is like a firework, it’s explosive, and Portugal is like an ember, smouldering, dark.”
CI That’s a good answer.
Carminho That wasn’t a test! I was actually in the same position, I was thinking I have to impress because I’m going to dinner with such an important person. I was the nervous girl in the room because I had arranged the dinner in this very simple fado house, very traditional, almost like a tavern. I thought, I don’t know if he’s going to like this simple, traditional place; I don’t know if the food is OK. But I was so happy because I found this group of people who had such sensitive vibrations, and it was so beautiful to have that dinner.
IG We talked about Natália Correia and Carminho helped me to understand who she was.
CI Was she your starting point?
IG Natália was a gift. I couldn’t have found a more appropriate muse for Max Mara. She’s everything – intelligent, beautiful, sexy, courageous, political. Carminho helped me to unlock who she was.

CI Carminho, are you used to finding yourself on creative directors’ mood boards?
C No! When I met Ian and told him I had never worked with a brand before, the thing I wanted to say to him was, “I will only connect myself to a commercial brand if I connect with its values.” I needed to understand the family and how they worked; the factory; the simple things, like the number of years that people have worked together; where Ian is working, [Max Mara’s] Collezione Maramotti, the way that Max Mara puts effort into the details and the quality, the consistency. But first of all, at the beginning of everything, the collection was inspired by Portuguese women. I’m also trying to find out the ethnography of Portuguese women in my own work. I was nervous about collaborating, but I accepted because of all this information, and also to work with Johnny Dynell. I’m just happy I know how to walk. 

IG I was nervous about the musical side because Johnny is a New York DJ. He’s worked with Madonna; he worked with Malcolm McLaren; he worked with Basquiat – all drums and club music – and this is quite different. The first meeting we had, Carminho said you can’t use drums in fado, because if you do, you get rumba or samba.

CI You wanted to keep the root of fado?

C It was important to communicate this to Ian because he was coming to Portugal to show his inspiration for his fashion show. I felt it was my obligation to say that if you want to have fado there, you have to preserve the authenticity of the genre. You’d have to find another way to get movement, to give rhythm.

CI In the end, you managed to find that balance.

IG Johnny’s sensitivity is amazing. He’s an artist, too. After I mentioned you to him, he listened to all your material, and said, “She’s amazingly talented; I would be so honoured to work with her.” He was desperate to be respectful of the genre and he tried just a few things very carefully, and Carminho was very positive about what he’d done. So I said, “Johnny, you can push it a little bit further”, and he put violins into the mix. That really lifts it a lot.
C I was so happy with the final result; I was so honoured. It’s the way I want to represent my work, my genre, my country.

CI What I loved about seeing you perform, Carminho, is how you work like a well-oiled machine, the way that you communicate with your three guitarists with the smallest nod or gesture. While Ian, you’re like a conductor in control of this incredible orchestra. How do you shepherd projects that are bigger than just your own contribution?
C We almost didn’t speak yesterday [at the fashion-show rehearsal] because he was doing his job and I was doing mine, but we were so connected. I looked at him and I knew we were thinking, “We did it!” He was not worried about me and I was not worried about him. I’m younger, and it’s beautiful to see the respect and the generosity in the way he listens to me, as does Johnny, who has been doing this all his life. When people are talented and have a big personality, it’s so easy when there are no egos and everything floats on generosity and talent.
IG  A conductor is precisely what I am because my design team is very small. A bit like Carminho and her three musicians, I have five or six designers. But we’re a part of a massive group that encompasses production, communications and the commercial department. When you come to a thing like this, you realise that you’re at the centre of this massive network of people. You’re doing the things that conductors do, making signals so that this or that person knows what they’re doing, but being really well-oiled means trusting the people you’re working with.

CI Carminho, I have heard you talk about the importance of the energy in the words you use in your improvisations and fado. Ian, you edit, refine and change the shape and silhouette so that ultimately the final catwalk looks are full of the energy you put into them. How does the energy at the beginning translate into the final output?
IG It should be very natural; you should never push it. I think about myself as uncovering or exposing an idea as if it already existed. If it’s torture to produce, it’s going to be torture to wear. I rarely do that thing you see in profiles of designers or documentaries and films where they take a dress, work on it all night and transform it into something else. I never do that – either it works or it doesn’t. Carminho tried things on and either we adjusted them slightly or we just abandoned them. We only abandon one percent of things, but I really believe in following the natural energy of a project and never forcing it. It must be the same in singing – if it’s not feeling good, then it’s not going to sound good.
C The organic thing in fado is what I feel, the energy of the words. One influence was my mother, of course, and Beatriz da Conceição was a singer who is no longer here, but she sang in my parents’ fado house. Once she said to me, “You cannot say ‘God’, as you would say, ‘chair’ – you have to put yourself and your energy in each word, to communicate, to forget yourself.” Every word has energy. In this way, you find your maturity. I’m more mature since I learned a lot of these things, and at the same time, I get better interpretations of the songs. I get to the heart of people probably better, because people are connected with this truth.
IG It’s not making it about you, but serving the soul. That’s precisely how I feel about designing – I’m not designing to be clever; I’m designing a thing that a person will enjoy wearing. So it’s not about me, it’s about you wearing the dress. I’m serving…
CI The woman.
C It’s an exercise in saying “no” to some temptations, because there are a lot of temptations.
IG To show off, to show how clever you are, to show how original you are. It’s about maturity because only when you’re mature can you have the ability, the confidence, to stand away from it and not feel that you have to impress everybody.
CI And to allow the thing that you’re creating…
C To be bigger than you. ◉