There’s plenty more to Brazil than football you know (and a good thing too, considering their 7-1 defeat in the World Cup the other week). Just the other month, I was invited to take a look at Brazil’s up-and-coming designers at Dragão Fashion Brasil in Fortaleza, and as you can read here, there’s a wealth of young design talent that’s reflective of Brazil’s growing power as both a fashion consumer and a fashion producer.
But what of the rest of the country? São Paolo isn’t the capital (that’ll be the Niemeyer-designed new city Brasília), but it is a city of almost unimaginable vastness. With a population of nearly 21 million, it’s the ninth biggest city in the world by population and the biggest city by area in the entire southern hemisphere. In practice this means that wherever you are in the city, you cannot see the edge, just layers of skyscrapers stretching, Fifth Element-like, as far as the eye can see.
With a tropical climate and nightmare commutes, what effect does this have on the fashion market? Francal is the largest footwear tradeshow in Latin America, bringing together over 1,000 different companies and 60,000 buyers, and cementing Brazil’s place as the confluence point for the Latin American market, as well as the world’s gateway to the continent. While a lot of the shoes on display were certainly more suited to the domestic market for glamorous beach and evening wear, we did stumble upon a fantastic local trainer manufacturer called M2000, who blend classic trainer shapes with jazzy fabrics and unusual colour combinations that shows a really strong design ethic and future for Brazilian brands. It’s an evolution of the trail blazed by the French trainer label Véja who use & support Brazilian manufacturing, but taking control of that ethos and establishing a local way of doing things.
Out and about in São Paolo, there’s plenty of subculture and opposition to the beachwear market and gloss that so dominates Rio de Janeiro’s boutiques. The city’s many galleries (small shopping arcades) cater for all sorts of niches, with the infamous Galeria do Rock representing the Camden Market alt.side of Brazil, even as it transitions from skaters to African hair shops.
We visit a housing collective called the Movimento do Moradia that occupies an abandoned building, in the vein of a Berlin squat. Much like those in Berlin, it is organised, clean and safe, housing hundreds of families on a greatly reduced rate, who could not otherwise afford to live near their jobs. Needless to say, in a megalopolis like São Paolo, the commute is terrifyingly long. There are hundreds of abandonded blocks in the centre of the city (the occupiers estimate 800), 100 of which are occupied in this manner, providing schooling, small-scale employment in the garment and catering sectors, and a safe environment to live in. It’s a stark contrast to the glossy shops just a few miles away, but evidence that the Brazilians are not only resourceful, but passionate. After such a tumultuous political history in the last 50 years, the people of Brazil still mistrust government, and are not very accepting of the status quo.
It’s this kind of mindset that fuels the Brazilian garment industry. When Chinese factories undercut their manufacturing industry massively in the late ‘90s, there was little that could be done. Tradeshows like Francal demonstrate that the industry now caters for a huge swathe of South America rather than international flavours, though there are seeds of development here.
The fabric & technology tradeshow Inspiramais is another economic stimulator. Developed by senior industry figures to showcase what Brazilian manufacturers were able to achieve, it showcases an unimaginable array of fabrics, fabrication techniques and particularly, unusual leathers – frogskin, tilapia scales or bull’s stomach anyone?
The whole Forum is co-ordinated by fashion designer Walter Rodrigues, who devises themes that guide the manufacturers season by season, and implements global projects that demonstrate the artistic side of Brazilian fashion and textiles. Remember the awesome rain installation at the Barbican last year? That was one of Walter’s – used to showcase the cleansing power of rain, and the way that it renews, as well as providing a great talking point, his approach is strongly art-based, and is leading textile manufacturers in the country to be more innovative and think about their market and potential; not only domestically, but in the world market.
But São Paolo isn’t just about trade fairs and textile collectives. The thriving art scene here goes some way to explaining why Brazil is where it is today. After centuries of indiscriminate colonization and a 20th Century of intense political posturing and revolution, Brazil’s art is an intense mix of European homage, art naïf and stunning landscapes, as befits a country of such natural wealth. Its contemporary art though is showcased in some of the best galleries in the city, with queues around the block for a new show from graffiti legends Os Gêmeos. When was the last time you saw a queue outside a British art gallery?
It’s this passion, and the diversity of a city like São Paolo, that demonstrates Brazil’s wide range and potential in the fashion market. As I noted from my last trip, with growing economic and political influence, it’s likely that the next generation of Brazilian designers will go on to helm international fashion houses, but it’s a loval phrase to describe the melee of São Paolo that best sums up what I saw: “de luxo ao lixo em cinco minutos” (trans: “from luxury to junk in five minutes”). This constant tension is what fuels the city, the country, and its industries, and it’s this tension that will birth the next wave of fashion greats.
- SL
