Instead of talking about Brazilian fashion, it would be more accurate to talk of fashion in Brazil, which is a little different. Even then, still trying to be careful and accurate, we should define what fashion and which Brazil we are talking about. If we are dealing with clothes, we can perfectly, naturally and without any separatist intent, divide Brazil into two different countries. There is the urban Brazil of the great cities, similar to other big cities in the world, where life revolves around offices, banks, restaurants, theatres, museums and night clubs; and the Brazil of sun, sea and sand, of the beaches which stretch for more than 7,000 kilometres of its coastline.
Each Brazil has its own lifestyle, and each has its corresponding fashions. In the cities, fashion is international. European, American and Japanese trends for each season are absorbed and immediately moulded to the climate of the country, while retaining completely the basic design. One might say that an urban Brazilian style does not exist, only a response to international trends. São Paulo and Minas Gerais are the main centres for the production and marketing of this sophisticated, cosmopolitan style. This adaptation, however, is done with great creativity by Brazilian stylists who, through the use of fabrics, colours and lengths, manage to give a Brazilian look to the most severe Japanese model, the most expansive Belgian creation, the most exquisite French fabric.
Although Brazilians do not initiate trends, they adapt international trends to Brazilian tastes, which are very specific. Brazilians like colour, they like miniskirts and T-shirts, they like well fitting clothes (hence the success of elastic fibres, such as lycra) and, more than any other people in the world, they like jeans. Perhaps because Brazil is a country with a young population, jeans have been universally adopted, and with time have become a kind of national uniform, regardless of age, sex or economic status. Jeans are worn from morning to night, and denim is used for shorts, bermudas, trousers, skirts and jackets, and worn on the beach or in the city, with sandals, over swimming costumes or with blazer and tie - a healthy and democratic national consensus.
But if Brazil is a follower of fashion in the city, on the beach it invents - and what invention! In this area Brazilians are unbeatable. Every year they create new styles which are followed and copied by the rest of the world, albeit with more discretion, because the styles are very daring for climates and mentalities which are not so tropical (although here we must mention a paradox. However small the bikinis may be, Brazil, oddly enough, has never gone topless. There must be a top, however minimal: top, yes - less, never). With year round sun and sea, the country's distinctive creations are the bikini and beach fashions in general. Every season of the year seems to bring a new style, a new colour, a new scandal. Various malicious or humorous names (loincloth, sunkini, dental floss, hang glider, cutaway) have been coined for these incredible and minute objects of consumer desire.
The living laboratory for such fashions, the catwalk of the imagination, is the city of Rio de Janeiro, especially Ipanema beach. It is there that fashion becomes living, creative reality. It is on this beach "so pretty and graceful" ("linda e cheia de graça") that the competition is fiercest, but centered round a different style every year. Here T-shirts are shortened, torn, painted, redesigned; bikinis are worn 'high' or 'low', shorts are baggy or figure hugging; new slang is coined; new drinks are tried out; new female icons are chosen; new surfing champions are venerated; and new music acclaimed.
In the south of Bahia, among sandy beaches and coconut groves, lies Trancoso, one of the prettiest little towns on the coast, little more than a large village. Despite its simplicity, it occupies a surprising place in the world of fashion. For it is Trancoso that has seen the acclamation and subsequent diffusion, through large numbers of young tourists from Brazil and overseas, of one of the most provoking, artless and feminine items of fashion: the little cotton dress - low cut, close fitting, short and usually patterned, a timeless look. This is the dress of the Gabrielas of the novelist Jorge Amado, the dress for rich and poor, young and not so young, the past and the 1990s.
And then there is the North East region, with its white lace, its bobbinet, its embroidered linen and cambric, fabrics which suggest, at least to the imagination, something as close as possible to a non-existent Brazilian national costume. They are the result of refined, detailed and delicate workmanship, and are used to embellish gowns, dresses, slips, handkerchiefs and towels. They are genuine folk products of great appeal, which have never been sufficiently marketed either within Brazil or as export items, hand made quality still waiting to be properly appreciated and utilised.
Brazil is an open, creative, hard working country, with a young population of 160 million inhabitants. Since 1990 it has been open to the world, a catwalk where the world can come and look, buy and sell, exchange and experiment. And the parade is full of promise!
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by Glória Kalil
