Brazil is an emerging fashion mecca that is consistently producing some of the world’s fashion greatest fashion minds. Here are just three of Brazil’s most famous fashion exports.
Carlos Miele
This Brazilian fashion designer is self-taught with a background in design from creating performance art and installation pieces in art museums internationally. He started creating an eponymous label featuring a women’s ready-to-wear collection in 2002, and an affordable label, simply “Miele”, in 2006. His aesthetic can be described as incorporating the “dialogue between contemporary and traditional, handicraft and technology”. Miele is known for including handmade crafts created in the favelas of Sao Paulo and native populations of other Brazilian regions as a result of fair trade and wage practices.
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His designs are often recognized for their flowing silhouettes that enhance a woman’s figure as she moves. A prevalent theme in his collections illustrates the unexpected result of crossing modern technology and artificiality with tradition and nature. Miele is certainly a force to be reckoned with, with his collections being sold in 30 countries. He also opened Miami Fashion Week in 2013 and received the “International Designer of the Year” award.
Francisco Costa
Perhaps the most famous fashion designer to come out of Brazil, Costa heads Calvin Klein Collection (the high end label of Calvin Klein) as the Women’s Creative Director. Hailing from Guarani, Brazil, Costa grew up in a village of about 8,000 people where he would put on charity fashion shows when he was young. His father ran a ranch while his mother owned a clothing factory. At the age of 21, he traveled to New York City without being able to speak English. There, he took language classes by day and fashion design classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology by night. He got a job working for a company who made dresses for Oscar de la Renta and Bill Blass, and ultimately ended up designing for de la Renta’s Japanese licenses for five years. He also worked as a design assistant for Tom Ford at Gucci before being recruited at age 39 for the Women’s Creative Director position at Calvin Klein in 2003. His early collections for Calvin Klein were much more feminine and sensual for the traditional sportswear brand, featuring transparent, feminine fabrics like tulle and chiffon. While this originally threw off some fashion critics, his aesthetic has become wildly popular among Calvin Klein enthusiasts.
Alexandre Birman
Alexandre Birman is Brazil’s Christian Louboutin, Stuart Weitzman, and Jimmy Choo. His couture shoes grace the feet of celebrities like Katy Perry, Demi Moore, and Jessica Alba. His designs are sold in Saks Fifth Avenues and Bergdorf Goodmans, and even warranted a mention on an episode of Gossip Girl. He is most well-known for using exotic animal skins like python, ostrich, and crocodile while utilizing other luxurious raw materials in his designs, which are each handcrafted, true to haute couture standards. From the day he was born, Birman was destined to be in the shoe industry, as his family already held a big stake in the Brazilian footwear market. He grew up working in his father’s shoe factory and had designed his first shoe at the age of 12. A sign of his continued success, Birman was inducted into the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) in 2013.
Emily Kaltman writes for Estancia Churrascaria in Austin, Texas. She enjoys writing about fashion design and South America.
