The 66th Lisboa Fashion Week, co-organised with the Municipality of Lisbon, is proud to announce MODALISBOA PEBBLING presented by OMODA & JAECOO as an affirmation of the role of relationships in shaping the systems of the present. At a moment when creativity, industry and society make visible the lines that have always connected them, the theme of this edition proposes a careful reading of what is built through accumulation, continuity and proximity, and of how actions repeated over time produce structural change.
The concept of Pebbling, rooted in digital culture and observed both in animal behaviour and in human relationships, describes the act of offering something in order to create connection. A simple gesture, charged with intention, that activates proximity, recognition and care. In a hyperconnected world, where digital flows bring minds closer while often intensifying experiences of bodily isolation, this minimal gesture gains renewed centrality. Technological mediation ceases to be neutral and becomes an active participant in the construction of relationships, influencing how we act, how we perceive ourselves and how we connect with others.
It is within this constant body of interaction that Fashion asserts itself as a deeply relational material and symbolic practice. We do not simply dress bodies. We operate within systems, cultures and technologies. Each object, each surface and each interface participates in a broader network in which human, machine, environment and matter coexist as active agents. ModaLisboa embraces this expanded field, understanding Fashion as a sensitive interface between bodies, productive processes, the city and time, and as a space where the experience of the other becomes central.
We operate within a sector where this logic of pebbling is easy to recognise. Local decisions reverberate across global chains. Matter, labour, technology and knowledge coexist within a delicate balance. Each choice integrates a wider relational field. The challenge lies in avoiding asymmetric accelerations, where technology amplifies differences or crystallises inequalities. Expanding the notion of relationship, between people, between bodies and objects, between humans and technical systems, becomes an ethical practice. In this sense, Fashion is a tool of relational care, capable of making visible and experiential the mutual dependence that sustains the system.
It is from this reading that the campaign for MODALISBOA PEBBLING presented by OMODA & JAECOO unfolds as a collective and evolving process. The first visual object now revealed results from contributions by the ModaLisboa community in Instagram comments, gathered and accompanied by Carincur and João Pedro Fonseca from ZABRA. Words, phrases, emojis and interactions began to transform a shared sphere that was initially neutral. This image corresponds to a first visible state of an ongoing process. Until the opening of the edition, the campaign will continue to shift, incorporating new participations within this publication and revealing successive configurations, in a continuous movement of listening and shared construction.
Between 12th and 15th of March, MODALISBOA PEBBLING presented by OMODA & JAECOO occupies Lisbon with a programme design that affirms Lisboa Fashion Week as a space where multiple forces of contemporary thought converge. It is also within this intersection that Lisboa Fashion Week positions itself as a context for work and economic development, where authorial creation, industry and business meet to generate value, knowledge and new opportunities. A space of visibility, experimentation and connection between Designers, brands, companies, partners and markets, where Fashion is understood as an inseparable cultural and economic activity.
With its epicentre at Pátio da Galé, the event also traces a strategic route through key cultural institutions of the capital, such as MUDE – Museu do Design and CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, proposing other ways of inhabiting the city. Proposals open to the public, with new formats, create moments of encounter and expand access to Fashion as a cultural, economic and social field. At the centre of it all lies the authorial work of ModaLisboa Designers, with collections that reflect the diversity of the Portuguese creative sector, robust, agile, free and attentive to the transformations of the world it inhabits.
MODALISBOA PEBBLING presented by OMODA & JAECOO thus asserts itself as a state of co presence. A place built through relationship, where different scales and temporalities coexist, and where the future of Fashion is worked through open, participatory and continuously evolving processes.
Without bodies, there is no system. Without relationship, there is no future.
