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Rio is fashionable and Rio is fun,
but can its young designers be taken seriously for something
beyond bikinis?
The answer from Fashion Rio, a five-day
showcase of 2006 spring/summer collections ending Sunday
seems to be: Not yet. "There's a lot of potential.
The problem with any sunny country is that people live
to go to the beach, so they don't really care about dressing
up," said Uscha Pohl, editor and publisher of VERY
Styleguide magazine. "The clothes are very commercial
and very wearable, but there's not a lot of high concept."
Pohl conceded there were exceptions. She cited designer
Alessandra Migani, whose collection entitled "A Day
in the House" featured models gracing one of the
few old two-story houses left in the Ipanema beach district.
From crystal headgear to chandelier-tangled
hair, there certainly was no shortage of "high concept."
Crystal headdress made several models
look like they were wearing candelabras, and their elaborately
quilted skirts and bloomers evoked the French chorus girls
Toulouse-Lautrec liked to paint. Blame it on Rio - or
blame it on Gisele Bundchen, the Brazilian supermodel
who put Brazil on the fashion map and whose international
success set many here dreaming of following in her steps.
Bundchen, appearing at the Rio show for the second time,
gladly accepts the blame.
"The designers have improved a lot
and the organization owes nothing to Paris," Bundchen,
who will parade for the Colcci label, told reporters.
But Fashion Rio is still mostly a local
affair, graced by telenovela actors who preen and wave
at each other across the catwalks, hordes of aspiring
models and Naomi Campbell, who has become something of
fixture here.
While Campbell avoided a repeat of last
season's wardrobe malfunction that left her topless on
the catwalk, the transparent fabric of the TNG dress she
wore this season left little to the imagination.
If the fashion is fun, it's also good
business. "Brazil loves fashion. Brazil loves style.
Brazil loves to be well dressed," said Fernando Valente
Pimental, CEO of the Brazil textile and apparel industry
association.
Pimental said that textiles and garments
in Brazil grew by 8.5 per cent last year into a US$25
billion (euro20.5 billion) a year industry, but less than
10 per cent is exported - and the future doesn't look
much brighter.
In an increasingly globalized market
place, Pimental said Brazil probably couldn't compete
with countries like India and China for the mass market.
So, he said, Brazil must work on niche
markets, winning customers with the romance of its image
and the glamour of cities like Rio de Janeiro.
In a country that long looked to Europe
and the United States for inspiration, Brazilian designers
are starting to assert their Brazilianness.
"It used to be that when you talked
about Brazil, you just talked about carnival. Now it's
time to talk about more, especially when the world is
starting to look at Brazil," said Ronaldo Fraga,
who designs for the Lei Basica label.
Still, Fraga's show illustrated the Brazilian
dilemma. His models featured cargo shorts topped with
wide metal-encrusted belts that would look silly on the
beach - or anywhere else.
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