|
 Following in the wake of garments, accessories made in Brazil are showing their face on the foreign market. Jewels, shoes and handbags made in the country are shown in shop windows all around the world.
Behind the creation of colorful and rhythmic collections are designers like Cecília Rodrigues and Francesca Giobbi. The products show the versatility of the Brazilians, who mix material like wood from the country with diamonds and rubies, and make necklaces out of fabric.
Stylist Cecília Rodrigues, from the southeastern Brazilian city of São Paulo, is an example of this pluralism. A former Citibank employee and daughter of a Portuguese builder, Cecília discovered that she had talent for the creation of jewelry.
She does not have the habit of drawing, but, as she herself describes it, "she has active hands", and brings the parts together as if she were embroidering.
In 1995, she abandoned her career at the bank and set up a studio in São Paulo. Success came with the release of her first jewels, which brought together Brazilian stones, gold and fragments of ancient pieces.
International recognition came at the end of the 1990's, when the designer was invited to participate in an auction at the Christie's gallery, in Geneva. In 2000, it was the turn of the Americans to get to know a little about Cecília's work, and her products were auctioned in New York, in another auction by Christie's and one by Sotheby's.
Millionaires, like the Venezuelan Patrícia Cisneros, owner of the Cisneros group, also purchased jewels made by the Brazilian. This year the jeweler showed her products in France, during the commemorations of the Brazilian year in that country.
What is her secret to win the foreigners? Working with quality raw material and professionals. "Whenever it is necessary, I have the stones cut in Europe so as to use them in the items I produce," she said.
Another thing: she watches carefully so as to collect material from all around the world and integrate it. The result may be seen in collection "Wood, Woods", which includes necklaces, bracelets, earrings and rings sculpted in Brazilian woods like Violetwood, Lauraceae e Brazilian Rosewood, covered in diamonds, rubies, aqua marines and pearls.
Costume Jewelry
The mixture of materials is also present in the work by costume jewelry designer Tutu Ferreira, from São Paulo. Tutu brings together palm seeds, wood of various kinds, and seeds with crystal, Murano glass and natural stones so as to make necklaces and bracelets.
The collections are very colorful and have also been successful abroad. "We have been exporting to the United States, Mexico and the Dominican Republic," explained Tutu.
Sales began three years ago. Next month, Tutu is going to take an important step in the direction of the European market. "We are going to participate in a fair in Milan (Italy)," she explained.
Tutu does not work with a closed collection, and therefore has "news" almost every week. The strategy is also good for the company marketing: Tutu's products are always in the editorial pages of the main fashion magazines in the country.
"Customers in this sector always want new products, to match clothes they have bought, and we therefore have to be agile," she said.
The only definite characteristic is the color palette of the season. For the next, spring and summer, the rule is to have colorful products, with yellow, orange and red.
Strong colors are also present in the collections of Ana Beatriz and Juliana Suassuna, from Studio Muggia, in Rio de Janeiro. The sisters design products for the Clube Chocolate stores, and sell in Brazil and Portugal.
The necklaces are different; the designers do not use stones, but work with fabrics and metals. For their last collection - spring/summer - they made even greater use of the fashion productive chain, having hired a fabric designer to create a print especially for their studio.
Anba - www.anba.com.br
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.