GORETTI MEDEIROS - FOUNDER | OWNER
Goretti was born in Lincoln, CA, and grew up in Lincoln, San Jose & Mount Shasta before moving to Southern California. She’s the oldest of two kids in her immediate family, but has 30 first cousins and says some of them are like her siblings. Her parents both immigrated from the Açores island of Faial. While Goretti was born in the U.S. like many first-generation children of Açorean immigrants, she says she was raised with Portuguese customs and traditions. Goretti recalls learning to sew from her mother at a very young age as it was a skill her mother believed would always be useful in life; a belief that couldn’t be more true for Goretti.
Goretti’s career has been one that proved her mother right. She achieved a master tailor level and worked for the brands Guess Jeans, Ambercrombie and Fitch, Fossil, and Juicy Couture, to name a few. With her knowledge of sewing that included aspects of every detail of the process, she became known for her expertise at ensuring garments fit properly with premier quality. Goretti’s career involved both the designing and the manufacturing of clothing. She’s worked for national brands in creating efficiencies for factories. She reached a prestigious career milestone for her industry by being a black box tester for software development. Whether it’s been on design end or the production end, Goretti is known for creating efficiencies while offering quality products. Rooster Camisa is the result of Goretti’s upbringing in the Portuguese community and of her years of experience in the fashion industry.
In the Rooster Camisa family, Goretti has the role of being the visionary and being a fearless leader. Because she’s worked in a very competitive industry her whole career, she knows every aspect of how to create quality products and how to forge long-standing connections that help make things happen efficiently. She feels she owes it to her customers to keep designing new apparel and to keep working with our Portuguese artisans to create new imports.
While Goretti loves the role of being the leader of Rooster Camisa, she also loves that she gets to wear many hats. As a small family-owned company, everyone wears many hats. One of her favorite things to do is to work at Portuguese festas and events. Goretti really enjoys working at a festa and talking to the customers directly; their energy inspires her. But she also loves the diversity every day brings. In addition to directing the business end of Rooster Camisa, she gets to create products. She says, “Every day, I get to work on creating products that I am passionate about. I’m always looking for upscale ways to provide our Portuguese community with the products they love, and I’m equally passionate about finding ways to share our culture beyond the Portuguese community. I’m just crazy enough to think that everybody wants to be Portuguese in one way or another.”
For Goretti, Rooster Camisa is a vehicle for her vision. That vision is building a community and spreading the good from the Portuguese culture to all who need to know about it!
Goretti wants to underscore that her vision isn’t possible without the amazing support she’s had over the years from the Portuguese community. She says, “I could not be where I am today without the support of the greater Portuguese American community. Rooster Camisa has also been very fortunate to have some very gifted and gracious Brand Ambassadors who have helped us tremendously. I also want to be sure to convey my endless gratitude for the love, encouragement, and support my customers have shown us during these hard times. Please know I look forward to seeing my customers' faces as soon as it’s safe to be back out in our community in person.”
“Sempre vá com foco, força e fé”
- Goretti Medeiros
Written by Margaret Resendes Peek