Sao Paulo Show

By Tom Murphy and Maximillien de Lafayette

Photo: A creation from Brazilian designer Andre Lima.

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.

"This was also a coming of age for Sao Paulo, which celebrates its 450th birthday this year," said Emanuela de Carvalho, a fashion consultant for buyers. "From what I've seen, Brazilian designers have finally sloughed off their European models. They're more free, more Brazilian." That means a fashion show that can be fun. This year's event brought supermodels Gisele Bundchen - in simple prints and lace, mock leather and an afro wig - and Naomi Campbell, in a signature bikini for the Rosa Cha line. Renato Loureiro decided to show off his line of riding gear by placing two of his models atop white horses. Other shows featured live dogs and snakes. There was plenty to do for the 100 janitors and 350 security guards. Would-be models also found work. Local celebrities paid them the equivalent of $US10 per show to act as front-row seat-warmers. As soon as the show began, the teenage models in blue T-shirts would pop out of their seats, giving way to TV stars, politicians, socialites and business tycoons. At one show, art imitated life when a group of TV actors shot a fashion show scene for a Brazilian soap opera entitled Celebrity. AP

Sizzling in Brazil

Fashions on show at Sao Paulo's Fashion Week

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Couture High Art Stalks the Catwalk

Art critic Richard Domet's jaw drops at the latest couture shows in Paris.

On Thursday night I saw something that made even this jaded art critic sit up and pay attention - Jean Paul Gaultier's couture show in Paris. As I sat there in my sober grey suit, a parade of beautiful Amazons passed by in their vertiginously high heels and towering piles of braided, coiled or frizzy hair. If the mannequins were not quite topless, they were dead sexy in gauzy silk jerseys with plunging necklines and skin-tight silk trousers. One Moroccan caftan slipped off a slim shoulder to reveal an evening gown as transparent as the flimsiest negligee. Under silk kimonos and monks' cowls were bodices, bustiers and laced leather corsets. On and on came the visual surprises, jokes and shocks. Even the bride who ended the show wore Samurai-inspired body armour. As each new apparition stepped forward, the intensity of the colours made your eyes pop: aubergine worn over poison green, the flounces of a black gipsy skirt embroidered with harsh yellow and scarlet flowers, a black model wearing a neck-to-toe body stocking in chocolate brown embroidered with white abstract patterns. Every detail was thought out down to the last embroidered bead, sequin and python-skin glove.

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Massive tribal jewellery covered the long necks and arms of most of the models so that, as they moved, you heard the sound of rattling coral, ivory, bone and turquoise. The giraffe necks of some models had been painted bright blue or yellow; others had their faces dotted with paint in a way that suggested tribal scarification. For a long time I have been interested in the relationship between fashion and art. I attended Gaultier, Valentino and Ungaro's couture shows in Paris last week and came away convinced that art galleries should hold regular shows of recent couture clothing. There are two reasons why I believe couture approaches the realms of high art. The first is that each garment is a unique act of creation by an artist whose feel for texture, colour and composition may amount to genius, as in the case of John Galliano or Gaultier. The second is that, like all works of art, these clothes are created without any serious reference to function - to the practical possibility that a real woman might be able to wear them.

Jean-Paul Gaultier

Gaultier's jaw-dropping outfits, for example, transcend culture and time. He treats his models the way an artist uses a canvas - as blank surfaces on which to embroider his wildest, most outrageous fantasies and as vehicles for his surrealistic imaginings. And I have to say that one of the most interesting aspects of the Gaultier show for me was that the painted and scarified giants who modeled the clothes were slightly frightening. For the finale, they all returned wearing only the bare bones of the clothes: the corsets, bras, high heels, fantastic jewels and headdresses. For a brief moment, I thought of the monstrous brigade of women who confront us in Picasso's first cubist masterpiece, the Demoiselles d'Avignon. Here was the same vision of European women seen through the prism of African tribal art, the same confrontational aesthetic, the same fascination mixed with fear of women's bodies. For, under the gorgeous fabrics and seductive colours, the models were encased in materials that are cold, hard and dangerous. Gaultier's clothes are not simply decorative masterpieces: they express feelings, ideas and emotions, like all works of art.

French designer Jean-Paul Gaultier's show at the 2004 Spring/Summer Haute Couture collections in Paris.
Photos: AFP & Reuters

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