Conference Cycle Ana Salazar | Great Artists on Campus #4
The Legacy of a Visionary: How Ana Salazar put Portugal on the international fashion map and paved the way for future generations
Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)
Ana Salazar
Ana Salazar, born in Lisbon on 19 July 1941, is universally recognised as the great pioneer and revolutionary of fashion in Portugal. The daughter of an architect and a dressmaker, she showed an innate creative flair from an early age. In the 1970s, she challenged the status quo by organising her innovative "Fashion Happenings", fashion shows staged in unusual venues for thousands of people, which forever changed the way fashion was presented and perceived in the country.
In 1978, she consolidated her vision by creating the Ana Salazar brand, with collections sold in her own shops. Her decisive step towards internationalisation came in 1985, with the opening of a shop in Paris, which was quickly considered by the French press as "one of the new temples of fashion". She thus became the first Portuguese designer to be included in the official Paris fashion calendar and to gain global visibility, with articles in publications such as Vogue and Elle. A headline in the newspaper DNR summed up her achievement: "Salazar is putting Portugal on the Map".
Her creativity transcended clothing. Ana Salazar designed costumes for theatre and ballet, uniforms for CP and CTT, created the "Moda Cerâmica" tile line, and the uniforms for the Portuguese pavilion at Expo'92 in Seville. She also licensed perfumes, eyewear, and home textiles, and exhibited one of her sculptures at the Louvre Museum in the exhibition "Variations Gitanes".
Her career was widely distinguished, most notably with the decoration as Grand Officer of the Order of Infante D. Henrique, awarded in 1997 by President Jorge Sampaio. After a period of business challenges that distanced her from her own brand in 2012, her resilience prevailed. She relaunched with the brand "Ana by Herself" and, in 2018, triumphantly regained the rights to her name. Her legacy, documented in books and an RTP documentary, remains that of a visionary who paved the way and definitively placed Portuguese fashion on the international stage.
