Fashion Doesn't Perform Miracles: Independent fashion writing, imagined and lived in Lisbon

Words By Marie Anne Arreola   |   August 2026

Some cities are born narrated—Paris, New York—handed their meanings before a single sentence gets written about them. Fashion belonged to those places before anyone showed up to claim it. Lisbon was never given that head start. It has spent years at the edge of the frame, bright and increasingly photographed, still waiting on a permission no one ever explicitly promised. People can describe what the city looks like now. Almost none of them could tell you what it thinks.

That, perhaps, is why I found myself returning to The Fashion Standup with such curiosity. The newsletter possesses a quality that is rarer than intelligence and rarer than expertise, though it has both. It is animated by attention. Not the attention that scans for novelty or hunts for relevance, but the slower, stranger kind that lingers. Reading it, I had the feeling of encountering someone less interested in explaining fashion than in staying with it long enough for it to reveal something unexpected about itself. The writing moves easily between Portuguese and English, but more importantly between scales, from the silhouette of a garment to the structure of an industry, from a passing aesthetic observation to a meditation on culture, desire, work, beauty.

Talking with Vera Lúcia Mendes, I kept circling back to a question I couldn't quite shake: how much of the newsletter's perspective comes from where it's written. Writing from somewhere outside fashion's accepted capitals changes how you have to look at things. Distance sharpens attention, if you let it. It loosens the obligation to repeat what's already been decided, and it makes curiosity worth more than access ever was.

Vera is a Fashion Designer by training, which she insists is not incidental but foundational—the lens through which every sentence she writes is cut. Her prose moves the way a garment moves: structured where it needs to hold, loose where it needs to breathe. She does not write like a journalist performing objectivity, but more so like someone who once stood at a worktable with pins in her mouth and has never quite put down the habit of construction.

What struck me first, though, was her refusal of a premise I had walked in with—that fashion media is missing something intellectually, that there is a void to be filled. She does not see a void. She sees an excess of fact and a famine of soul. This is, I think, the quiet provocation at the center: that fashion writing has confused rigor with research, when the real rigor is in storytelling, in the discipline of feeling something all the way through before you write it down. It is a very Dillard-like proposition, if I may—that attention itself, paid carefully enough, becomes a form of devotion, and devotion is what fact-checking alone can never produce.

She is unsparing about writers—famous ones, internationally bylined ones—who call a thirty-year veteran of Portuguese fashion an "emerging talent," a small inaccuracy that, in her telling, becomes a moral failure. This is the tension she lives inside: a belief in soul as the highest editorial value, paired with an almost forensic insistence on getting the facts right. She wants both. She thinks you can have both. Most of us, frankly, settle for one.

There is something bilingual happening here beyond the literal—Portuguese and English, yes, but also the bilingualism of working in two registers at once: irony and earnestness, the personal and the structural, Lisbon and the four cities that fashion has decided are the only cities that count. She told me she hopes her work demystifies "the Miranda Priestley myth," the idea that cruelty is the price of relevance, that you must suffer under someone glamorous and terrible to be taken seriously. Every insider she knows from the Portuguese fashion cluster, she said, is the opposite of that myth.

That solitude has a shape to it; the literal, structural solitude of running a publication alone, made visible in a body the fashion industry rarely photographs and almost never bylines.

By the end, our conversation had stopped feeling like an interview and started feeling like something closer to standup—one person alone on a small stage, working it out loud, daring you to laugh in the right place and sit with her in the wrong one. She doesn't believe fashion performs miracles. She believes something smaller and more durable: that fashion tells the truth about what a culture is willing to forgive, in itself, in its luxury conglomerates, in writers who pick favorites and call it neutrality.

What she's built, in the end, is a discipline. Research from Wednesday through Friday. Writing only once a feeling is ready to leave the body, somewhere between Friday and Sunday, less composed than confessed. What follows is that discipline in her own words—funny, exacting, and entirely unwilling to perform anyone else's idea of where fashion's center is supposed to be.

MARIE ANNE: The Fashion Standup began from a desire to fill a gap in thoughtful, research-driven fashion writing in Portuguese and English. Can you share what cultural or intellectual needs you felt were missing in fashion media, and how your own background in design shaped the editorial vision you pursued?

VERA LÚCIA: My editorial vision is entirely defined by my background as a Fashion Designer—that's my mindset, that's how I think. I don't consider there to be anything lacking from an intellectual or cultural standpoint in fashion media. However, I feel that fashion writing with greater depth and thorough research is very focused on facts, when the heart of fashion is in storytelling. Fashion has always been the catalyst for my creativity—first I understood what fashion was, and then I learned to better articulate my ideas. Most fashion writers don't operate this way, and that's perfectly natural. So I offer a differentiated perspective.

Another issue is that there are so many articles in leading publications, and fashion professionals don't have time to read everything to justify the expensive subscriptions they pay for... But I believe they will have time and might feel inspired by The Fashion Standup's weekly article.

MA: You've chosen Substack as your home platform in a media landscape dominated by visual social platforms and algorithm-driven content. How has Substack shaped your editorial practice, and what opportunities or limitations has this creator-first model presented?

VL: I'm completely in love with Substack. I believe in the platform's potential, and for those who've already heard of it, it's easy to explain what you do. Substack's entire structure facilitates the development of intellectual work across various fields, and the fashion community is, in fact, a very beautiful community. I love the more traditional social networks—that's where I met great friends, my mentor, and many people who make up my village. But Substack right now is extremely empathetic and welcoming. Currently, the main challenges are figuring out how I can give my best from the perspective I have on fashion in a balanced way with my authenticity and with The Fashion Standup's monetization—meaning, growing both my free and paid audiences. And obviously, there's always an issue that cuts across any solo project—getting sick, with the flu for example, I don't have anyone to create content for me, to substitute for me. In short, my experience with Substack has been extremely positive.

MA: Your writing often goes beyond runway reviews to explore fashion as a system, its histories, economies, and social implications. What responsibilities do you feel fashion writers and creatives have when interpreting fashion beyond surface-level trends?

VL: I truly believe that anyone who sets out to interpret fashion has the responsibility to do their homework. Fashion writing can also be a beautiful framework for advertisements, but it's not about gossip. So I think the greatest responsibility fashion writers have is to share their essence so that the message has enough soul to be conveyed... But to be more specific about doing your homework, I saw one of the most famous names in current fashion criticism call a Portuguese fashion designer with over 30 years of experience an "emerging talent"... It was an easy statement to verify. Beyond that, everything that qualifies us as functional citizens of a capitalist society—those who work in fashion have a duty to themselves and to others to be fully aware, if fashion is truly what makes them vibrate, what makes them pulse.

MA: Independent fashion media can be a counterpoint to mainstream fashion journalism. How do you see The Fashion Standup contributing to broader conversations about fashion culture, especially from perspectives that are not Paris, Milan, or New York–centric?

VL: I foresee The Fashion Standup becoming an example of how fashion can be understood through independence. Even if it doesn't go viral, I hope it inspires people who love fashion to question and rethink the idea that you'll only succeed in fashion if you live in London, New York, Milan, or Paris. In my case, focused on Lisbon, I end up demystifying not only the geographical issue but also the Miranda Priestley myth... All the examples I have regarding fashion insiders from the Portuguese fashion cluster are the exact opposite. I confess this question is the most complex to answer because TFS is a solo project. But my maximum contribution, which I wish to achieve, will never be to equate Lisbon to the fashion four in terms of fashion—I want to be the best fashion substacker I can be each day, to be part of the puzzle of voices documenting fashion beyond the traditional circle.

Perhaps my answer touches on the clichéd or utopian, but it's true. And I hope that through my work, the conversation about diversity can also open up behind the scenes—namely, the inclusion of disability. I'm very proud to be a fashion substacker with an MA in Fashion Design and a woman with cerebral palsy.

MA: Walk us through your editorial process: how do you balance rigorous research, personal insight, and audience engagement? What guides your decisions on topics, tone, and publication cadence?

VL: In terms of balancing the various aspects of my work—nurturing the community, doing research and investigation, and writing—it's something I'm still learning to do. I tend to research extensively and leave the writing for the end, very close to the moment of publishing each essay. I make an effort for engagement to be a central point of my work, but editorially, the main premise is to guarantee time and space to talk about what's happening in terms of fashion in Lisbon. The remaining topics emerge and fall into place.

In terms of work routine, the days I dedicate most to being on Substack and social media are Monday and Tuesday, followed by—usually—three intense days of research, so Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. If I don't get lost in the magical world of fashion studies, it's also around this time that I make the collages. Writing is a marathon that takes place between Friday and Sunday. Between sharing personal stories and that rigorous research, I don't really have a metric for what percentage of text will be devoted to one thing or another—it depends on the topic. Since the name "The Fashion Standup" came from my ability to be ironic and my love of humor, when I write from a personal point of view, I always try to make it fun.

MA: In a world increasingly attentive to issues like sustainability, identity, and social justice, what do you believe is the role of fashion, and of fashion writing, in shaping cultural understanding and social change?

VL: I believe that the responsibility of fashion writers regarding social justice, sustainability, and identity involves not having double standards.

In other words, we always have fast fashion and the Inditex group in our sights, but we easily forget or ignore whatever it is if the sinners are LVMH or Kering. But many fashion writers like to associate with these groups, and that's natural, as long as your loyalties are known to your audience. For example, all my readers are aware of my emotional relationship with Lisbon Fashion Week. And without alienating the responsibility of fashion writing in this context, other industries should also do the same examination of conscience.

Fashion changes the world, but it doesn't perform miracles.