The History Of Creating Ementa

Why Moved By Friendship, the Meaning Behind the Name Ementa and the Baby Ikon

Apparently, Ementa started the same way as a lot of other clothing brands, but it always felt unique, sincere, and necessary for all of us.

In the middle of the 2000s, we were just a group of energised and enthusiastic Portuguese kids skating around Lisbon.

Videographer Emídio Silva, one of the founders of the brand, was constantly filming the crew. Inspired by skate videos and lifestyle culture, he documented our unique style and way of being, always playing with humor, empowerment, and the moments we shared together.

Having fun while skating and making videos about ourselves naturally strengthened the group of friends. It gave us places to meet, reasons to stay out, and a shared language before any of us had words for what we were building.

Lisbon is a big place, and growing up can be scary at times. Our friendship helped us settle and grow. It became home, family, and a way to meet people we probably never would have crossed paths with otherwise.

Back to the video side of things, Emídio needed a name to post the first video he was making about the group. A few ideas came up, but none of them really clicked.

Then we asked ourselves a simple question:

What feeds us?

The answers were always the same: eat, sleep, and skate.

That’s where Ementa came from.

In Portuguese, Ementa means menu. Everyone in the group had completely different personalities, tastes, and characteristics, but together it somehow made perfect sense, like different ingredients forming the right combination.

The name represented exactly what we were building.

We then started making T-shirts simply because we wanted to wear something that felt like ours. Something that represented how nice it was to be involved in such a fun, empowering, and always moving thing. It was a small gesture, but it carried something bigger.

Over time, the clothes became more than clothes. They became symbols attached to places, sessions, conversations, and people. A T-shirt stopped being just a T-shirt, it became proof that a moment happened.

A way to recognise each other in the streets.
A way to say: we’re part of this.

We know what you must be thinking, but somehow we kind of made it work.

Around that same time, the Baby drawing appeared.

It rapidly became a symbol of that early energy surrounding the group. The humor, innocence and connection we all shared during those years. To this day, the Baby Ikon still takes us back to the beginning of everything.

Co-founder Raphael Castilho, with his desire to impact things differently, helped push Ementa from skateboarding into a wider high-streetwear universe.

Growing up around art, Raphael developed a natural connection to symbolism and visual language from an early age. That influence eventually became part of the brand itself, an always-evolving concept, the Artist Editions.

It made us happy to create our own vision and share it with people who genuinely understood what we were trying to achieve. That’s why memory and experience became such an important part of Ementa.

Embracing friendships as one of life’s most important rules. Collective memories, people who’ve seen you at all manner of stages of development, and new friends are also equally important. People can fall into your life at any moment. And if their connection to you is a positive one, it’s important to celebrate it. 

Because friendship doesn’t only exist in one form. Support doesn’t arrive in one way. People enter your life unexpectedly, sometimes for years, sometimes for a season, and still leave something permanent like a shared afternoon, a lesson, a place, a feeling, a sense of belonging.

Through these values, our group introduced many people to skating,  people who today still mention Ementa as one of the best things they’ve been part of.

The question then became:
How could we build differently around this group of friends?

That movement between people became the real foundation of the brand.

That’s why memory is central to everything we do. Not nostalgia, but recognition.

As the brand evolved, so did that universe. Through graphics, archives, photographs, ruins, symbols, sketches, and collected fragments, the world around Ementa became just as important as the garments themselves.

At the same time, the clothing evolved with us.

Ementa needed pieces that could be worn every day and everywhere, regardless of what we were doing. What we look for now is comfort, quality, and effortless designs, clothing that feels natural yet stylish in all different situations and contexts without ever losing its identity.