Portuguese Shoes Campaign 2021

After a year of pandemic and isolation, it’s time to stretch your legs, run, dance and leap into the air to gain perspective. A qualitative leap in our lives and the lives of others: a new era is upon us. We will never be the same; we will be inevitably better.


For the 2021 Portuguese Shoes campaign, supported by Compete 2020, APICCAPS invited Portuguese ballet dancers and models to star in a photo session by Frederico Martins. Images that commit us to the silence of a new beginning. Experienced, expressive, muscular bodies, accustomed to effort and pushing their limits, bending and stretching, folding and unfolding, opening to the arrival of spring. Like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon in search of the sun.
Come as you are shows your truth, skin and disarming nakedness in black and white. Only authenticity can be the future, a starting point for doing more with renewed energy, adding colour to a blank page.

In these uncertain times, the Portuguese footwear industry continues to provide reliable value, a benchmark of quality worldwide. Because it understands the value of well-made things. Its foundations rest on the valuable experience of generations, he legacy of around 40,000 artisans who create unique pieces every day, providing footwear for Portugal while also exporting to 163 countries on five continents.

A sector that has grown a great deal in the last decade and distinguished itself because it knows how to use tradition and know-how alongside new technologies, the finest raw materials and awareness of the planet. Thanks to a joint strategy and effort, today it’s a modern, fresh, vibrant, creative and irresistible industry. Europe’s sexiest industry has an increasingly large share of the world and the future, even when it seems like they’re both on hold.

Can the footwear industry be an art form? The art of detail made with love and knowledge, and the art of creating ourselves along the way. In 2021 we’re going to leap into the air, with both feet, towards the future. Creating long-lasting foundations, with our feet firmly on the ground, on the sand, on the grass, in the world. Feet like roots.

Directed by Frederico Martins
Shot and edited by Raul Sousa
Original theme by Dioo Chaves

With Anilton Cabral, Catarina Casqueiro, Daniela Hanganu, Isilda Moreira, Ivan Romão
Photo: Frederico Martins assisted by Pedro Sá and Diogo Oiveira
Choreographer Marco Ferreira
Set design Joaquim Rocha
Production Helena Silva Snowberry
styling: Fernando Bastos Pereira assisted by Nelson Lima
Hair Rui Rocha
Make up: Patrícia Lima

Coordination Paulo Çoncalves and Cláudia Pinto APICCAPS
Special thanks to Ana Magalhães