Wolf & Rita developed as a separate brand inside a small family business based in the North of Portugal. Taking advantage of an history of more than 30 years of experience in specialized shirts making, the decision to create their own brand came naturally.
Embracing the use of old techniques and the natural expertise that comes with experience, Wolf & Rita still maintains its family structure and most of its staff has been working for the company for more than three decades, passing along its valuable expertise and skills to a new generation of workers.
The brand is 100% Made in Portugal as a proof of quality but also it means a support for the local community. For that reason, all workers are employed locally and live within a 30Km distance from the company. Wolf and Rita’s fabrics and trimmings are of the finest quality and always locally outsourced and produced by local companies.
The suppliers are also neighbours, decreasing energy consumption and reducing the carbon footprint as much as possible. Most of the brand´s printed material is produced by a local charity that gives shelter and support to children in need.
Enjoy the story of AW 20: Born into slavery, William “Bill” Traylor spent much of his life after the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation working as a farm labourer in rural Alabama, and, later, as a shoemaker and factory worker in Montgomery. It was only then, homeless and in his eighties, that Traylor began making drawings and paintings on paper, using gouache and other media.
His works, depicting cats and dogs, rabbits, street figures, dancers, and other characters, are visually striking, simple and yet powerful.
Traylor’s vibrant imagery and colour palette inspire and compose the patterns created for the Autumn-Winter 2020 collection. Traylor left behind more than one thousand works of art and he is regarded today as one of the most important American artists of the twentieth century. We named the collection Freedom Blues.
Blues as in the electric, deep colour Traylor has so brilliantly used and is known for. Blues as in the music from the American South. Freedom, which was something Traylor surely did not take for granted, and which is still a reason of concern for each and every one of us today.
Traylor would not live to see the civil rights movement but he was contemporary to those who laid its foundation. To those, then, agents of social change and to those acting today we wish to pay homage.