Lucas Nascimento’s A/w 2011 at Fashion Rio | Source: FataleFashion

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — “I didn’t even know international trade fairs existed when I set up my business in 2003,” admitted Alessandra Migani, founder of Brazilian designer label Alessa. “I got a phone call from ABIT (the Brazilian clothing and textile association) telling me they wanted to show my collection at trade show Simm in Madrid,” she told BoF from her stand at womenswear show Who’s Next in Paris earlier this month, where she was showing her Autumn/Winter collection. Fast forward to 2011 and Ms Migani now sells her brand to some 30 countries and boasts an impressive list of stockists. She also shows at Rio de Janeiro’s fashion week, Fashion Rio.

With Brazil’s huge domestic market, most of the country’s fashion designers — save for a few international success stories like  Osklen and Carlos Miele — had been quite content to live in their South American bubble. Then while the US, followed by Europe, hit financial meltdown in 2008, Brazil was still sitting pretty on economic growth. Suddenly, all eyes (and not just those in fashion) were on a country that, until then, had been largely synonymous with football, bikinis and samba. Suddenly, more emerging Brazilian fashion designers, operating both inside and outside the country, had a tremendous opportunity to be noticed on the global stage.

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Louise Amstrup S/S 2011 | Source: Louise Amstrup

LONDON, United Kingdom — London Fashion Week continues to be the world’s premier platform for emerging fashion talent. And while Danish-born, London-based designer Louise Amstrup isn’t yet on the official LFW schedule, we think she should be.

Last season, Amstrup’s show — sponsored by On|Off, a platform for emerging fashion talent that presented the designer with the Visionary Award for 2010 and has previously showcased designers like Mark Fast and Peter Pilotto — hit all the right notes.

Inspired by the darkness lurking amidst the sun-drenched glare of the American desert and a vision of a strong woman traversing “dusty roads and carcass-covered plains” (the press notes referenced Sissy Spacek in Badlands and Marianne Sägebrecht in Bagdad Café), the collection was exceptionally crafted and communicated a clear aesthetic vision.

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Today, BoF is pleased to bring you the exclusive premiere of a film by The Little Squares about rising luxury business, The Elder Statesman

LOS ANGELES, United States — “Ever since I was a little boy, I always gravitated towards well made things. Always. It was innately in me,” says Greg Chait, the amicable and charming founder of The Elder Statesman, in For The Record, an editorial newspaper to be distributed during Paris mens fashion week, alongside a new content rich website launching today.

A collection of ultra-luxe essentials — heavy gauge cashmere blankets, intricately shaped buffalo-horn eyewear, four layer cashmere wool hats — The Elder Statesman introduces an understated, laid-back aesthetic to the world of luxury. “About 10 years ago I was given a really beautiful cashmere blanket,” explains Chait. “I then started collecting blankets from France, Italy, Scotland, even Ethiopia, and I wound up with a great collection, but I could never find the one that I really wanted for myself. It had to be utilitarian as well as the ultimate in terms of luxury, so I found a collective in Canada doing handspun wool and they were working a little bit with cashmere and I asked them, ‘can you create a really heavy gauged yarn for me?’”

The Canadian collective said yes. “I didn’t know a lot about yarn at the time, but somehow I figured out that it was ‘about the yarn,’ it has to be about the yarn. It’s the D.N.A. of everything,” he goes on. “So they hand spun a yarn for me, which we then hand knitted into a blanket that weighed ten pounds! I made two of them for myself.”

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Hung Huang | Source: Hung Huang

BEIJING, China — Imagine a brand new China where modern women reject increasingly ubiquitous foreign luxury goods, and their counterfeit reproductions, in favour of raiment designed by local Chinese fashion talent. This is the vision that Hung Huang, the entrepreneurial CEO of China Interactive Media Group and the oft-described “Oprah of China” — she also runs fashion magazine iLook, frequently appears on television as a cultural critic and pens one of China’s most widely read blogs — aims to achieve with her retail venture Brand New China, or BNC, a platform designed to encourage high quality, independent Chinese fashion.

BNC occupies a 540-square-meter space in Beijing’s hip Sanlitun area, home to global brands like Balmain, Balenciaga, Lanvin and Comme des Garçons’ new I.T Market. But, as a rule, the boutique only stocks fashion, accessories and lifestyle items made by emerging Chinese designers, whose products are sold on consignment.

What Chinese fashion needs more than anything now is curation. “You need a credible ‘editor’ to say, ‘I stake my reputation on this, and I’ve tried it, and it’s good, and I didn’t get paid for saying this,’ and that’s what we’re trying to do,” Ms. Hung said.

As BNC explores e-commerce, expansion into other important economic centres like Chengdu or Shenzhen, and the possibility of pop-up shops in Western department stores, Ms. Hung revealed exclusively to BoF her top designer picks from a growing scene of rising Chinese fashion talent.

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Horse Sculpture | Source: Jordan Askill

LONDON, United Kingdom — Listening to Jordan Askill speak about his intricate jewelry is something like listening to a fantastical storyteller who magically transports you to a mythical, far away land, filled with surprise and beauty at every turn.

“I don’t feel there is any reason to create something without a real purposeful story that can at least resonate at some emotional level,” says Askill, a former assistant designer to Hedi Slimane at Dior Homme, where Askill first honed his very precise luxury sensibility.

Askill’s high-concept jewelry designs — each one the result of a multi-faceted creative process incorporating organic sculpture, handcrafted materials, and cutting-edge technologies — create genuine emotional connections with luxury consumers drawn to the stories embedded within each and every piece.

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