THE BEGINNING

My name is Diogo Raposo Pires, and I am the founder of GIVEMESTORIES. I’m here to tell you my story and how this project came to be.

I come from the interior of Alentejo, from a very small village called São Matias, near Beja. I am the fourth child in a family of six siblings.

Since I was a child, my passion for fashion was evident. My twin sisters, who are 11 months younger than me, and I used to play by creating dresses for our Barbie dolls and wedding dresses for them using white bed sheets. From a young age, the art of dressing caught my attention. My parents never prohibited me from playing with it. I remember that as a child, there were “Happy Meal” options for boys and girls. Even back then, my mother would order the “girls” option for me because she knew I was interested in the mini Barbies and My Little Ponies, not the cars and Legos that came with the “boys” option. She supported my interest in fashion without ever questioning why I always wanted the “girls” Happy Meal.

My mother, my inspiration, was an avid reader of Hola magazine, and even as a child, I would be captivated by the beautiful photographs and the clothes that celebrities wore on the red carpet. Little did I know that one day my future would involve working for a magazine in the same industry. But let’s take it step by step, from the beginning to the day this project entered my life.

I grew up in a humble but loving family, consisting of my six siblings, my mother, who dedicated her entire life to her children, and my father, who worked day and night to ensure food on the table.

I was always a restless and curious child. I would often give up playing with other kids outside to stay with my mother and her friends, listening to their fascinating stories.

After finishing high school in the arts, due to life circumstances, I started working in door-to-door telecommunications sales, a job that was said to be good. And truth be told, even in places whose names I didn’t know, with scorching temperatures of 40 degrees Celsius in the shade, I enjoyed that job because I spent the day listening to stories from unknown people whom I rang the doorbell for. I had 5 seconds to capture their attention and make them want to listen to me. It was a job where I became the grandson of many grandmothers who spent their days alone, and I was the only available person who wanted to listen to them. I heard many stories and gained so much wisdom from each person’s sharing.

After a year in that job, I decided to come to the big city, Lisbon. Firstly, because all my friends were here at university, and secondly, because deep down, I wanted to be and know more. I wanted to be free. I wanted to fly. I knew I had to be independent.

I arrived in the city by parachute and felt lost amidst all the information, without direction, unsure of what I really wanted. It was as if I had entered a jungle and couldn’t find my way. Until one day, I met Bruno, who became my partner for 9 years, and he looked into my eyes and made me believe that I could achieve my dream of working in fashion. He asked me what I wanted, and I answered that I wanted to work in fashion. His response was, “Then let’s explore ways for you to achieve your dream.” .It was at that moment that I started to believe in myself again, and after much searching, I found a course in visual merchandising. Among the options, it was the one most closely related to fashion and promised quick money. I studied and worked at a call center to sustain myself in Lisbon.

In that visual merchandising course, I rediscovered my creativity, which had been locked away until then. Throughout the course, my sketchbooks were filled with drawings of clothing pieces I wanted to create, and all projects had to be related to fashion. It was there that I discovered my love for styling, fashion photography, and videography.

In one of my course projects, I started a clothing brand with three of my classmates. The day we took the photos and filmed the campaign video was one of the most incredible days of my life. It was during that time, without knowing the significance, that I got two triangles tattooed because the brand was called Nitágora, and the ‘A’ in the logo was a triangle. I’ve always had a fascination with triangles, but I never paid much attention to it. It was then that I started researching more about their symbolism. It was at that time that my faith returned. Triangles kept appearing throughout my life, and in reality, they make perfect sense because they symbolize movement, change, and growth. It was during that course that my life changed, and my growth began. So, they make so much sense in my story.

After the course, I worked in visual merchandising for a few months until one day my phone rang. It was my photography teacher, Ricardo Santos, asking if I wanted to try my hand at styling. Without a second thought, I accepted, and from there, the dream started taking shape. After that job, Ricardo and Tiago Frazão, who worked at Lux magazine, suggested me as a stylist for the magazine. I did a job for Lux magazine, then another one, and another one. It was with this magazine that the boy from Alentejo started entering the market, making contacts, dressing celebrities, and stepping into the world he had always dreamed of.

But as I mentioned before, I was always restless and eager for more and more. I believe that because I believed so much and was so grateful, the universe rewarded me. That’s how I gained strength and showed my worth through hard work and sweat. I gathered friends who were makeup artists, photographers, videographers, and models, all of us starting out, and we created fashion editorials where creativity had no limits. And when a magazine accepted to publish our work, it felt like winning the lottery.

While I was at Lux magazine, my dream was to make a cover for LuxWoman magazine, which is our group’s fashion and hardcover magazine. Even though I enjoyed doing social events, it was the creativity of fashion that fascinated me. And once again, one day my phone rang. It was the Director at the time, Ana Cáceres Monteiro, whom I consider my Lisbon mother. Attentively, it was Ana proposing that I do my first cover for the magazine, featuring Leonor Poeiras. I remember that day as if it were today. I trembled, sweated, researched, and that’s how I started working for the magazine and later became the Fashion Editor, up until today. This position makes me vibrate, and every month I create and connect with a new story.

But not everything is always perfect, and two years ago I lost my greatest love, my mother, the woman who inspired me, to whom I owe who I am, and who made me fight every day to make her proud. The woman who embraced me when I wanted to give up on everything, the one who always believed in me and gave me strength to continue. It was after the loss of this love that I woke up in the morning and only saw darkness, I woke up and felt ungrateful for having everything I ever wanted, but in reality, I felt empty. It was at that moment that I decided to travel alone for a month to Mexico and found light in that magical land. It was there that I deepened my spiritual self and reconnected with the earth and my purpose. It was during that trip that I decided to launch Givemestories.

In this first collection, I decided that all the pieces would be black and white for this reason, because sometimes we need to go into the darkness to find the light again. The beginning of the world started with a black hole; they are the portal to a new and unknown realm of possibilities.

Givemestories is more than a brand, it is a community of sharing. When I thought of launching this project, “sharing” was the key word for it. We are all stories, we are all fragments of the stories we gather throughout our lives, and they shape the person we are today. In that sense, the brand will thrive on the story of each individual, it will transform each story and represent it in a collection through color, pattern, or print.

I have always loved electronic music, festivals, and music in general because many of the stories I have lived have a soundtrack, and it is through music that I disconnect from the world, let go of ego, and allow my body to be carried away by the beats of sound. When we dance, there is no position, profession, or status; we are simply connecting with those around us in the purest form of our being. For this reason, I want this brand to also breathe this art, as well as other forms of art that exist and tell stories and create memories.

This is the beginning of a project that will grow every day, with all of you, with your stories. Everyone is welcome to this space of sharing.

Let’s make stories together! It’s the beginning!

Diogo Raposo Pires

FOUNDER GIVEMESTORIES