#1 - Les Rêves Perdus / Lost Dreams

blue velvet editorials First edition, June 2020

les rĂŞves perdus / lost dreams

Film, Lille, 2019

Film, Brother, Algarve, 2017

Que viagem é essa

Que te diriges em todos os sentidos

Andas em busca dos sonhos perdidos

- António Variações, 'sempre ausente'

a letter from the founder

Welcome to Blue Velvet Editorials.

artwork by Eduarda Rodrigues

Founded in 2020, Blue Velvet Editorials came from lost dreams that were found again while I lived in Paris. These dreams reflect the reality of writing and wondering about almost everything with as much honesty as I have in my body. BVE will evoke fashion, art, beauty, cinema, anything, alongside some original film taken during this journey. The main goal of this project is to build a community of artistic discussion in whichever way it may occur, giving a space to young humans who aren't afraid of speaking their truth, and projects that fight for a better future to our grandchildren. I know that, together, we will achieve something great.

The first edition honors 'lost dreams', an expression that is beautifully sung by António Variações in his song 'Sempre Ausente'. His lyrics constantly remind me that I need to keep chasing them, even though I might be led in different directions. This attempt to approach and explain 'lost dreams' will be made through art, words, movies, personal and others' reflections, Each edition will have a thoughtful and transversal theme, connecting all content released.

I want to thank my incredible family, friends and stars who supported this crazy idea while I was experiencing the hardest time of my life. When I doubted my strength, you stepped up and you didn't give up. Especially you, mom, there are no words in this universe to describe your light. We made it!

▪

▪

Like when you are dreaming, let your unconscience lead

on this discovery.

Catarina João Vieira

contents

a

letter

time;

from

the

christina's

founder;

world;

two

notion

lost

of

souls

in one; la la land; more than material;

1942;

human

beings

in

a

mob;

'ir

sonhando'; paris; empty canvas;

1n dreams

Film, home in Paris, 14th arrondisement, 2019

notion of time

The only thing that I know for sure during these 4 months is that the notion of time doesn't exist. You visualize yourself in any given situation and after that, you're there.

It's impossible to feel the time fly over you, you don't really know what's going on. Actually, you're never aware of anything. You're just there, watching it. How are we supposed to feel in our bones what we really want, if we'll never know where we are. That self-discovery we really want to pursue is only a matter of seconds, we're conducted to another discovery and then another. And today we're a different person. And today is the day we'll try to remember tomorrow. And tomorrow will be your today.

It's so hard to keep up with this. It's so hard to know that in our twenties life flies by and you're still waiting for something to happen.

And all the noise around us, all of the people that surround us, they probably don't understand that. They're victims of this too. Because it's just noise. You loose sensibility, hope. We're in our twenties and figuring out what life is. Maybe it's too soon to question time and its consequences on us. Maybe it's too soon to question anything. We'll be here for more years, and we'll live because of the time. The time we lost ourselves, we doubted our senses, we felt everything in our skin.

But probably it will be our most genuine seconds, the ones who acknowledge that the time is actually a matter of seconds and we will be able to actually enjoy it.

And, despite of the noise, don't forget:

there is always music in the air.

Youtube, Season 1, Twin Peaks, directed by David Lynch

Film, 14th arrondisement, 2019

christina's world

Andrew Wyeth, american painter, drew Christina crawling.

Christina had a disease that enabled her to walk. And Wyeth draw Christina in her state of mind: indomitable. Unconquerable.

His hopes for her was so brutally genuine. Andrew brought her mental resilience and painted Christina as a warrior of her world, ready to conquer anything. And he drew her as she wanted to be seen and you can almost sense the quiet and the domestic realism that radiates off the canvas.

Wyeth draw Christina's looking at her lost dream. A dream that should be hopeless because her world, in the end, was only physically limitated. She dragged herself on her utopia. But never in her mind.

photo from Vogue

1942

This Vogue Magazine was launched in July of 1942, in the United States. It was also the year Stephen Hawking was born, the physicist that defied the sky, and tried to theorize everything. Literally. Also, Paul McCartney was born. The person who fought for peace and for the sun in people’s mind. Like July, a month of sun, light, brightness, happiness, and full of life. It’s that time of the year when you put the sunglasses on, and you see things in a smooth, natural and poetic way.

1942 was also the year that Camus published “The Stranger”. It’s a story about a man in the summer who kills an Arab man because of the sun. That’s what he says. Mersault, the hero, doesn’t react, doesn’t feel, doesn’t believe. Life, to him, just passes by. Minimal emotion or not all. Even in the prison. Hard and dry vision of consequences and acceptance. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t care. I repeat: It’s a story about a man in the summer who kills an Arabic because of the sun.

Why? I don’t have an answer. No one in their perfect morality would do that. The only thing I know is that he sees life as an outsider: a natural consequence of being born, and you suffer for that. You just exist and that’s it.

Like we, perfect strangers to life, we should also be able to see things in a different way, as outsiders. But try to not to fear what you might read, see, feel, observe, contemplate. It can be chaotic, it defies you, it keeps you away from the fantasy, because it’s the reality and we can’t deny it. Our sense of belonging to this world is meaningless. We're all going to die someday. But, like Stephen Hawking who tried to have brief answers to big questions, Paul McCartney who reached for the sun, and a Vogue cover in the summer: we should be able to step away from this thought and put the sunglasses on when the sun hurts or you might kill something inside of you. Or someone.

two lost souls in one

It’s publicly known that Annie Hall can pull off literally anything. Love, spontaneity, passion for life, art and style. Well, I repeat: Annie Hall is the character of all time. Woody Allen’s invention is a young woman with a lot of dreams and, let’s say, a complex mind. And don’t forget about the boyfriend, Alvy Singer, psychotic like Woody Allen. Wow, I’d say that the resemblance is awesome. She was complicated: a young girl, trying to make a career in music, not so lucky in love, but still, passionate about everything, even though she received lots of books regarding death: life is too short for not having poetry in it, right?

'Annie Hall', 1977, Written and directed by Woody Allen

And, I add to that sentence: life is too short for not facing Annie Hall as a fashion icon. An androgynous, independent, geek style, she (as I said) could pull up everything. “Move around like a real person. Don’t make too much of the words, and wear what you want to wear,” said Allen when shooting. And Diane took his words to heart, got inspired by the men in Soho and took the menswear to another level.

Ralph Lauren was the only man who helped Diane with that. High-waisted trousers, khaki pants, vest, collared shirts and, of course, a tie, Annie put the 1970s woman in a place where she could wear whatever she wanted.

Why? She was constructing herself and there’s no better way to do it with no style restrictions. In other words, she became a fashion phenomenon and remains as such. (Hey Alexa Chung, I see you).

Like Woody playing Alvy with uncanny resemblance, so was Diane playing Annie.

You could be confused when watching the movie because the characters were exactly the same as the humans who portrayed them. Dianne brought the drama and the grace and faced Annie as herself. Like a piece of clothing, life or a bit of poetry: you should be able to pull off any fucking character you want.

Life is too

short for not

having poetry

in it, right?

Film, Galeries Lafayette Champs-Élysées, Paris, 2019

more than material

Everything we touch is a tangible piece, but sometimes there is something beyond their form and shape that tell us a different story.

"More than material" is s section dedicated to all the materials that we cross in life that are simply more than a physical object. This section will cover fashion, beauty... and something that the sky holds.

'le smoking' by YSL

The sixties were an era of change for women. Due to the liberation movement, women (finally) felt the power that they knew they had long ago.

During this period, people couldn't be indifferent to this.

Yves Saint Laurent was one of them.

He liberated women from their costumes and created the iconic "Le Smoking", a women's tuxedo, where they wear the pants. No genres attached, like it should have always been.

Back then, it was a risky move for a designer but YSL didn't look back and made history as one of the creators of an emancipation symbol. And it stood through the years on other brands, stores, etc. YSL turned fabric into something beyond their utlity and design. "Le Smoking" was much more than its material.

Women had always the power. They were always heading somewhere, some dream that was always within them: being free. Free from their clothes, free from themselves. photo by Helmut Newton, 1966

'grab it' by wonther

Wonther is a Portuguese jewelry brand, founded by a fierce woman, Olga Kassian. When it comes to courage, Olga shows no boundaries.

She left her small city in Ukraine and moved to Portugal. After some years, she moved again but to New York where she discovered a whole new world. She was a foreigner, indeed, trying to find herself, but in her mind, she was a citizen of lost dreams. And Wonther was born from all these experiences abroad and her passion for real stories and authenticity.

Wonther celebrates women, real humans that fight for their dreams everyday. Women that grab them with all their nerve. Each piece is filled with a perfect equilibrium that almost defies the laws of physics, and reminds the woman who wears it that she can be as powerful as pure gold.

Wonther is more than its material.

More than gold, silver. More than its shape and form. More than itself.

Find out more about Wonther at wonther.com.

photos by Wonther

photo from Pinterest

taste of real life

Remember those nights when we didn't know where we were but we knew who we were? Remember those nights where we left the dance floor sweating? Remember those nights when we forgot our existence and we danced, danced, danced, danced to the radio? Remember those nights where we felt everything in our skin and we finally had a taste of real life? Remember those days when music was our only escape? Remember those days were we started to dance in the morning and we couldn't keep up with our energy? Remember those unforgettable moments were music was the true meaning of those seconds?

Well, let's remember those moments together!

On each edition, we'll release a collaborative playlist on our official Spotify - Blue Velvet Editorials. 'les rĂŞves perdus' is out now and you are free to add any song that makes you remember, feel, achieve, anything that reminds you lost dreams .

â–Ş

â–Ş

shot from the 'Veridis Quo' music video, one

of the songs that are on the playlist

paris

Film, Pont des Arts, 2019

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a

young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your

life, it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast.” -

Ernest Hemingway, to a friend, 1950

I’ve been trying to write about Paris for almost a week now, and the truth is that I never thought it would be so hard. It’s like writing a love letter to someone that doesn’t exist. The only difference is that Paris does exist, its wind speaks louder than my words, you can actually feel it, but you can’t convey the exact words that will express its feelings and sweep them away.

Living in Paris as a young woman was the type of reality I never thought I would be able to live. I had a fantasy in my mind and I remembering saying on my first trip to Paris “One day I’ll live here”.

Well, I never thought those words would be absolute, but it taught me to never underestimate the power of the unconscience.

I flew to Paris in 2019 expecting a change, an answer, something that I hadn't sensed, a reason. Instead of answers, this city gave me a light whose brilliancy invaded my senses and I felt, quoting Susan Sontag, I was constantly “being born”. Every street, coffee, talk, museum, walk by the Seine, old bookshops, people, feelings, was a birth of perceptions, inspirations, and life.

Paris was, is and will always be my lost dream and I’ll never be able to write what it is to me. I may live in other places, states of mind, but Paris, oh Paris, you will always be my movable feast.

human beings in a mob

Film, The Wedding Feast at Cana, Louvre, Paris. 2019

Blue Velvet Editorials always had the goal of being a place for discussion of all kinds. This section is dedicated to humans who turn a given question into something worth our time.

Like the biblical representation of The Wedding Feast at Cana where Christ turned water into wine. .

What is a lost dream to you?

As far as lost dreams go, “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” seamlessly depicts a feminine reverie through a fiery, passionate self-discovery. This journey is made in a relatively short time-span; nonetheless, its intensity is felt as an imperative delusion with no space boundaries.

This motion picture gathers quaint frames of unexpected glances and glares as it playfully adapts color and light to the characters’ fragile moves and volatile moods. The storyline guides us through a beautiful rendezvous between two women whose desire to savor freedom is met through artistic creation; yet art reaches a new significance as they satisfy each other’s meanings. Even though it takes place in the midst of the eighteenth century, there is something undoubtedly novel about it – its ability to reinvent traditional conceptions, namely that of the female muse. As spectators, we observe a woman being a source of inspiration by another woman, whose occupation is simultaneously atypical and shadowy for such an époque: she paints portraits. Their appreciative, contemplative relationship is in equilibrium, contrary to the old-fashioned definition, as they find in each other the comfort of liberty.

All in all, “Portrait de la jeune fille en feu” (its original french name) paints a work of art composed by the intimacy of human connections whose finish line is the consummation of memories that burst into the flames of a timeless romance. Just like a dream, the livingness is lost into the debris of an undefined space – and it burns.

#1 Beatriz Landeiro

“You have to act

as if it were possible

to radically transform

the world. And you have

to do it all the time.�

photo from pinterest

- Angela Davis

#2 Mariana Esteves

I know you are tired. I am tired too, but we’re just getting started. Women still experience discrimination in the labor market, women still die at the hands of men, women are still slutshamed and rape victim-shamed…The expected change is necessarily cultural. Culture powerfully shapes social consciousness and ours has been like this for millennia, yet to be changed.

When it comes to silencing women, we have thousands of years of experience, so, every time we see a panel of white men, we tend to normalize it. Instead, we must ask: where are the women? Asking this, we realize that the real question will be why is power closed in a circuit of white men?

Power works across race, class, gender, and sexuality. Therefore, to work towards equality, we must understand that all injustices are connected. It may seem like gender injustice decreased when women won the right to vote, but at first, only white women with qualifications and, in some cases, only property-owners were given this right, allowing economic and racial injustices to continue. We also have to get rid of the gender binary and its stereotypical norms, that are no more than social constructs.

We were exposed to millennia of invisible rules and prejudices, rooted in a culture that takes women out of public spaces and sends them to domestic care. It is true that, especially in the last century, women have been proclaiming their voice, however, at the current rate, according to a report by the World Economic Forum, it would take 95 years before we can talk about parity in politics and 257 years to close the Economic Participation and Opportunity gender gap. To shift social norms takes time and action, but since we don’t have time, we are left with action.

It may seem like a utopia or a lost dream. But whatever it is, it has the power to keep us moving forward. This is a humanistic project for social transformation, materialized in collective action. Indeed, we know that it may not be possible to reach a certain ideal as fast as needed, however stopping the fight will never be an option. I know you are tired. I am tired too, but we’re just getting started.

#3 RogĂŠrio Valdemar

The La La Land

we're intrinsically

searching for

'La La Land' , directed by Damien Chazelle, 2016

The lost dream that we end up looking at him on a night at a soon to be familiar jazz club: with all of the feelings in our skin, wishing to go back to that faded reality, regretting every step of the way that we denied the passion. And, accept there is no turning point, even though we are now desperate for emotion.

Just the memories and the hidden smile we conveyed in a singular portion of a second that the world could tell there was nothing more beautiful than us.

time to test the

grandiosity of the

human being

Morning Sun, Oil on Canvas, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio, 1952

a reflexion of these months

empty canvas

We stare at Edward Hopper paintings today more than ever before. Lonely, introspective, realistic living souls trying to uncover the complexity that is the human being.

But why?

We're now closed behind doors, due to an invisible enemy that, unfortunately, isn't the only one that can lodge (and kill) us. We have, unconsciously, so many that can make us loose our freedom and be stuck like characters in a painting. The reality that irradiates from Edward's pieces are so contemporary that makes us think if is there anything left for us, or if our integrity is vanishing like oil on an empty canvas.

We stare at Edward Hopper paintings feeling the same as its characters.

The difference is that they are confined on those frames forever.

We aren't.

pedro.

[Section in portuguese] O Pedro é português. O Pedro é, este mês, o Pedro. Quiçá, no próximo será outro. Este é o primeiro texto de Pedro e vão sonhando, antes que os outros o façam por nós.

Film, Porto, 2018

Ir Sonhando

Há uma cena belíssima em “Os Verdes Anos”, de Paulo Rocha, na qual Júlio e Ilda caminham juntos, em silêncio, num Domingo à tarde. É dia de bola, e ouve-se o ruído do estádio ao fundo. Perante o amor impossível na capital, o casal refugia-se na solidão, mas de nada lhes vale. O barulho persegue-os até quando eles encontram o silêncio.

A cena tem um único defeito: não existe. Quando Ariel Schweitzer reviu o filme em Locarno, esperou ansiosamente a cena que tanto o tinha tocado vinte anos antes. Ela nunca chegou.

Tal como Schweitzer, também eu tenho pequenos momentos que reverencio, aqueles que mais me tocaram e que ainda hoje vejo como a cristalização perfeita deste filme ou daqueloutro. Há Naomi Watts e Laura Harring, chorando, sobre um plano noturno de Los Angeles em “Mulholland Drive”. Manuel jogando à macaca em “Manuel na Ilha das Maravilhas”. A despedida do Barão em “Barão Prášil”. E cada um deles me assalta a memória recorrentemente, com uma clareza brutal, mas, ao mesmo tempo, talvez não exatamente como antes os lembrava.

Pouco importa. Afinal, a grande beleza do cinema é a de ir sonhando os filmes que já se viu, esses sonhos perdidos que outros encontraram por nós.

(Baseado num texto de Ariel Schweitzer, tradução de Carlos Natálio, que pode ser encontrado aqui: https://www.apaladewalsh.com/2016/11/os-verdesanos-a-sequencia-em-falta/)

in dreams

A candy-colored clown they call the sandman Tiptoes to my room every night Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper "Go to sleep. Everything is all right."

I close my eyes, then I drift away Into the magic night, I softly say A silent prayer like dreamers do Then I fall asleep to dreams, my dreams of you In dreams I walk with you, in dreams I talk to you In dreams you're mine, all of the time We're together in dreams, in dreams But just before the dawn, I awake and find you gone I can't help it, I can't help it, if I cry I remember that you said goodbye It's too bad that all these things Can only happen in my dreams Only in dreams, in beautiful dreams

roy orbison, 1963

scene from the movie 'Blue Velvet' where Ben (Dean Stockwell)

lipsyncs to 'In Dreams' by Roy Orbinson

The artificiality of this scene is so genuinely pure and, contemporaneously, shows the authenticity of dreaming. Defining lost dreams is a task that requires fantasy and a dose of realistic craziness like a Lynchian dream. We'll never be able to fully understand why it happens because there is no explanation. We are constantly changing, and dreams change with us.

After all these pages, experiences, life, I learnt one absolute truth: we, as living humans, are fortunate to dream. Dream awake, asleep, here, there. We just need to keep on doing it everyday and never stop reaching for the utopia we envision for ourselves, and its explanation.

We know in our deep senses it won't be real, or doesn't exist. But, we will throw some fire and fight for it.

Film, Mom and Dad, Paris, 2019

thank you for being part of

this lost dream.

Second edition soon:

les mauvaises habitudes de la vie / bad habits of life

Written, Directed and Edited by Catarina João Vieira

Revised by Bárbara Sénécaut A big thank you to my special guests Beatriz Landeiro, Mariana Esteves, Rogério Valdemar, Pedro and my deep gratitude to Maria Inês Garcia.