We are pleased to make available the Vocabulary of Basic Terms in Portuguese, in the Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese varieties, developed under the leadership of Carla Alferes Pinto, Maria Cristina Volpi and Susana Duarte Martins.

Experts in terminology, translation, clothing and museology in Brazil and Portugal have established the equivalence of terms in Portuguese, based on the English version of the Vocabulary of Basic Terms (VBT) of ICOM/Costume.

In Brazil, the project to translate and adapt the VBT into Portuguese arose from the need for Brazilian researchers at the School of Fine Arts of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro to use a controlled vocabulary in the description and recording of clothing items in their research carried out in museum collections.

Between 2018 and 2019, a team coordinated by linguist Janine Pimentel and clothing historian Maria Cristina Volpi brought together students and teachers from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, the State University of Santa Catarina and the National Historical Museum, resulting in the practical application of the vocabulary at the D. João VI Museum and the National Historical Museum, both in Rio de Janeiro.

In 2023, the e-book Terminologia e catalogação vestuário: percursos interdisciplinares (Terminology and clothing cataloguing: interdisciplinary approaches) was published by Editora Pimenta Cultural, organised by Janine Pimentel and Maria Cristina Volpi, with the results of the studies carried out by the Brazilian team.

Considering the lexical variations of Portuguese, between 2020 and 2025, the project was expanded by a team of linguists and clothing historians from Universidade Nova de Lisboa, giving rise to the TERMVEST project – Terminologia do Vestuário: Versão Português Europeu (Clothing Terminology: European Portuguese Version), coordinated by linguist Susana Duarte Martins, from CLUNL – Linguistics Centre at Universidade Nova de Lisboa. This study was applied to the terms used in the DRESS project –

Desenhar a Moda das Fontes Quinhentistas (Designing Fashion from 16th-Century Sources) by researcher Carla Alferes Pinto, from CHAM – Humanities Centre at NOVA FCSH (Faculty of Social and Human Sciences), dedicated to the study and reconstruction of 16th-century Portuguese costumes.

Currently, the Organisation of the Meeting on Clothing Terminology in the Portuguese Language is underway, to be held from 7 to 9 April 2026, at the New University of Lisbon – NOVA FCSH. The meeting aims to bring together the two teams to present and discuss the results of their work, with representatives from Portuguese institutions linked to museology, heritage and the Portuguese language (ICOM Portugal, National Costume Museum, Lisbon Academy of Sciences) in attendance. At the same time, the event aims to bring together researchers interested in the issue of clothing terminology, seeking to promote the creation of teams that focus on the linguistic varieties of Portuguese in Africa and the specificity of the clothing of its speaker communities, considering the pluricentrism of the Portuguese language.

You can download the three files from our terminology page, or clicking here.

Brazilian team

Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

Faculty

Janine Maria Mendonça Pimentel – coordinator

Maria Cristina Volpi – coordinator

Madson Luis Gomes de Oliveira

Students

• Postgraduate Programme in Visual Arts, UFRJ

Carolina Casarin da Fonseca Hermes

Carolina Morgado Pereira

Fuviane Galdino

Hellen Alves Cabral

• School of Fine Arts

Henrique Guimarães dos Santos

• Faculty of Letters

Luciene Cristina Alves de Lucena

External members

NATIONAL ARCHIVE

Maria do Carmo Teixeira Rainho

NATIONAL HISTORICAL MUSEUM/IBRAM

Jeanne Cristina Mautoni

STATE UNIVERSITY OF SANTA CATARINA

Mara Rubia Sant Anna

Káritha Macedo

FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF RIO DE JANEIRO

Hapuque Marinho (undergraduate in Museology)

 

Portuguese team

New University of Lisbon

Faculty

Susana Duarte Martins

Carla Alferes Pinto

Students

Filipa Baptista

 

Partial results

PIMENTEL, Janine; VOLPI, Maria Cristina (eds.) Terminology and cataloguing of clothing: interdisciplinary approaches. São Paulo: Pimenta Cultural, 2023.

• Digital ISBN: 9786559397693
• Printed ISBN: 9786559397679
• DOI: 10.31560/pimentacultural/2023.97693

Available at https://www.pimentacultural.com/livro/terminologia-catalogacao/

 

Links to the projects mentioned

TERMVEST – Clothing Terminology: European Portuguese version: https://clunl.fcsh.unl.pt/projetos/projetos-curso/termvest-terminologia-do-vestuario-versao-portugues-europeu/ (PT) // https://clunl.fcsh.unl.pt/en/projetos/projetos-curso/termvest-terminologia-do-vestuario-versao-portugues-europeu/ (ING)

DRESS – Designing Fashion from 16th-Century Sources: https://vestenovafcsh.wixsite.com/website/dress