WORLD HAUTE COUTURE AND FASHION

 

 

Sao Paulo Show

By Tom Murphy

Photo: A creation from Brazilian designer Andre Lima. Reuters

Despite the doe-eyed models, miles of muslin and yards of silk, the common man managed to catch and keep the spotlight at Brazil's biggest designer event, Sao Paulo Fashion Week. The watchwords at this year's event, were sales and jobs. An entire floor of the Sao Paulo Biennal Pavilion was transformed into a fashion salon, a polite word for a beehive of functional conference rooms where sales personnel for three dozen designers pushed this year's autumn and winter lines on big-buck buyers. "This is fashion real people can wear," said Fause Haten of his masculine line, a juxtaposition of cowboy boots, blue blazers and torn jeans. To underline this year's minimalism, Haten had his 28 male models parade a new line of boxer shorts as his show's grand finale. The last 12 months have been a veritable "year of the common man" in Brazil, under tutelage of the country's first working class president, former drill-press operator and labour union boss Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Vanessa Sette, helping to sell Huis Clos Fashion, said business hasn't been quite as lively as expected. "But this is only the first year for this approach. It's not just the coming of age for Brazilian fashion, it's the coming of age for the Brazilian textile industry. Think of the jobs!" she said. In fact, the industry already employs some 1.5 million people in over 30,000 individual companies in Brazil, making Brazilian textiles the leader in Latin America. The industry is looking to create thousands of new jobs this year. While Haten trumpeted the common man, Jefferson Kulig's line focused on the common woman seemingly at home with both needle-and-thread and modern textile machinery. Kulig's bikinis came with sheets of piled up fabric samples, as if the models were making factory deliveries. Black and white threads sprouted from his casual wear for a semifinished, industrial look.