RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – Arriving in Rio de Janeiro in the middle of the Brazilian summer, in a country experiencing an ongoing economic boom, certainly puts the bleak, uncertain economic outlook of wintry Europe and North America into sharp relief.

I was invited to Brazil on the generous invitation of ABIT, the Brazilian Textile and Apparel Industry Association, to attend Fashion Rio, the smaller of two semi-annual fashion events just concluded in Rio and São Paulo this week. And as ever on my trips to international markets, it was the perfect opportunity to explore firsthand one of the fastest growing luxury markets in the world, to see some local designers, and to get to know the local BoF community as well. Brazil ranked 13 on our list of countries with the most BoF readers, based on website traffic in 2011.

I came to Brazil with three questions on my mind: what are the prospects for the Brazilian luxury industry, what’s it like to do business here, and who is the Brazilian consumer?

… Continue Reading

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.

… Continue Reading

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — While Sao Paulo Fashion Week kicked off on Friday, the industry’s eyes have been on Brazil and its booming fashion sector for a few weeks already, specifically on Rio de Janeiro and its own designer showcase, Fashion Rio. The weeklong run of shows in the country’s second city traditionally precedes the higher-profile Sao Paulo collections. And in the first month of the new decade and with an increasingly competitive and crowded calendar vying for the attention of busy editors, the pressure was on for Fashion Rio to justify its existence.

Some voices have called for a consolidation between Sao Paulo Fashion Week and Fashion Rio. Others said that the fabled vacation and cruise destination should stick to what it does best, namely beach and casual sportswear. Even the event’s organizers, Luminosidade, signaled that it might be time for a refocusing: in a press conference held last fall in Paris, the organization’s president Paulo Borges promised to transform the week into a first tier platform where international designers would present their resort collections, a laudable if overly ambitious plan that, if it comes to fruition, may take years to implement.

Nonetheless, the real and positive news is that none of the drastic prognostications has, yet, come to pass. Instead, Fashion Rio wrapped up last week after one of its strongest seasons in years. In what seemed to be a concerted, silently agreed upon effort, the over two dozen designers that showed their Winter 2011/12 collections to an international audience proved that a radical organizational reinvention isn’t necessary to make a strong case for Fashion Rio’s continued importance. The overall message was that Rio de Janeiro is moving away from bikinis towards sophisticated sporstwear and doing it with unexpected self-assurance.

… Continue Reading

São Paulo Cityscape | Source: Superfuture

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — You hear about it at dinner parties and fashion events. It’s been the subject of countless magazine stories and news reports. Something special is going on in Brazil. And today, the momentum has nothing to do with cultural clichés like soccer and samba. Brazil is claiming its place on the global stage and interestingly, fashion is playing a major role in the country’s ascendence.

Significantly, the tremendous energy in Brazil’s fashion market is flowing from both inside and outside the country. For global fashion brands, Brazil is a land of opportunity. Just this year, Diane von Furstenberg, Missoni, Chanel, Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Burberry have made, or are making, large investments here, opening stores in major urban centres — mostly in São Paulo, but also in the capital city Brasilia, a fast-emerging market for luxury goods. Indeed, a spokesperson for Gucci told BoF that in 2009, their São Paulo boutique was one of the brand’s top performing stores worldwide.

… Continue Reading

The Business of Fashion has landed in South America and our first stop is São Paulo, a city whose population is second only to Tokyo. But while Tokyo is one of the world’s undisputed capitals of luxury and fashion, Sao Paulo is a city still on the rise, with a budding indigenous retail scene to complement the recent arrival of international luxury brands.

As friends told us over dinner last night, nobody is thinking about recessions or credit crunches here. The Brazilian economy is on fire and the top end of the market in particular is being fuelled by cash generated from a record number of IPO’s on São Paulo’s stock market. There are months-long waiting lists for Porsche Cayennes and executive helicopters, which jet the well-to-do from home to work to play, thereby avoiding the traffic gridlock in the heaving city below. Today, the size of São Paulo’s private helicopter fleet is thought to be one of the largest in the world.

… Continue Reading