APICCAPS | PORTUGUESE SHOES CAMPAIGN

The Portuguese dancer from the Royal Ballet House, Marcelino Sambé, is the protagonist of the Portuguese Shoes 2023 campaign and the new international ambassador of APICCAPS.

After two years of the pandemic, the Portuguese footwear industry returns to international markets with an unprecedented campaign that gives body and movement to an industry that reinvents itself year after year. Under the lens of Frederico Martins, styling by Fernando Bastos Pereira and choreography by Daniel Gorjão, the Portuguese Shoes 2023 campaign — an initiative of the Bioshoes4all project, which has the support of the Recovery and Resilience Program (PRR) — stars Marcelino Sambé , the principal dancer of the Royal Ballet House, in London, and was photographed at Casa da Música and Piscina das Marés, in Porto.

The images are a tribute to talent, resilience, creativity and excellence — praise that can be applied both to the dancer and to the Portuguese Footwear Industry.

For 15 years, the footwear industry has been celebrating the national arts and culture, walking alongside them towards the future. In that period, Portuguese footwear exports increased by 67% and now amount to 2011 million euros (APICCAPS estimate) and more than 80 million pairs of shoes produced.

Consisting of 1 500 companies, responsible for around 40 000 jobs, the sector doesn’t want to stop there and recently presented the new strategic plan for the next decade, thus renewing the ambition to be a “reference international market and reinforce exports, virtuously combining sophistication and creativity with productive efficiency, based on technological development and management of the international value chain, thus guaranteeing the future of a national, sustainable and highly competitive productive base”.

Credits:
Coordination: Paulo Gonçalves, with Cláudia Pinto
Photography: Frederico Martins, assisted by Pedro Sá and Vicente Sottomayor
Styling: Fernando Bastos Pereira, assisted by Nelson Lima
Production: Helena Silva ‘Snowberry’
Hair: Rui Rocha
Make Up: Patricia Lima
Protagonist: Marcelino Sambé
Choreography: Daniel Gorjão
Backstage Photos: João Saramago
Video: Raul Sousa
Graphic Design: Manifesto Works