The truth is I
don’t even know where to start. I think I can start by saying I didn’t just meet
João by chance on this track and that he wasn’t wearing that outfit; that it
was me who asked him to turn up before the sun was gone and that it was also me who brought this jacket,
these trousers and this pair of boots. At a time when so many people are
questioning the permeability of editorial publications into commercial
dynamics, I thought it would be interesting to trace the narrative going in the
opposite direction. I made up my mind that I would create a commercial space
where anyone visiting would run the risk of finding genuine and informative
content. I made up my mind that I would manage a store without forgetting how
to manage this blog.
I travelled to
places as different as Madrid, London, Florence, Felgueiras, Vila Nova de
Famalicão and Charneca do Lumiar (industrial areas that most of Portuguese don't even know). I found this blog’s images on foreign brands’
mood boards (at meetings
that didn’t go too badly) but I was also fobbed off and let down gently (after
meetings that didn’t go so well). And today, on the very day when I sacrifice
the editorial purity of this blog, for the sake of the business it would not
have been possible to create without the blog that is being so sacrificed today, I present to you the business that could not exist without
this blog. Because, after all, it is
daft sentences like this that you can continue to find in that business. Because,
after all, just as you do here, you will find there Lisbon streets, models
who are not models, home-grown productions and unedited images. And, broadly
speaking, the visual identity that has been immortalised in this set of
portraits that have come to be known as street style. The visual record that, swept along on a whole online
dynamic, turned ordinary man into style icons and made snapshots of everyday
life into inspiration on a global scale.
It is just this. A clothes store. A clothes store for
men. A clothes store that, riding the crest of these 5 years of Alfaiate
(Tailor), has shown that a real product experience can be offered via the internet. That it is possible to create
an online process of
product discovery that goes beyond the image of a standard-size guy taken
against a pastel wall, with the head cut from the shot. That it is possible to
discover a product through the same yardsticks and visual contexts that we will
have to live through with that product. That it is possible to read a review written by somebody who, long
before sitting down to reel off information about a product, has actually worn
it. That it is possible to ensure control of all this provided I limit myself
to the masculine reality. So much so that, before vouching for it, I bought the
jacket that João is wearing from its designer. So much so that, before dreaming of writing this blog,
I was already wearing those trousers. That is why I say I look on this business
as if it were the Alfaiate. The blog that inspired a business. A business called J. LISBON. A business I hope is to your liking. Because, however
much I am convinced of your interest (and this blog has helped me understand
that the most important approval is the one we ourselves ascribe) nothing you
can say beats a good slap on the back. Here is J. LISBON at first hand
