São Paulo Fashion Week – Part One

Celebrating its fifteenth birthday this season, Brazil’s biggest fashion week kicked off on Friday with an au courant mix of supermodels, cult bloggers and one international tabloid celebrity. The opening show went to Animale, a commercially successful brand that mixes Calvin Klein-esque minimalism with Brazilian va-va-voom—the label’s body-conscious styles went in an airy winter white direction this season, but the biggest runway stars were the slew of supes, including Raquel Zimmerman, Animale’s longtime face, Isabeli Fontana, Ana Claudia Michels, Bruna Tenorio, Deborah Muller and Viviane Orth. The front row was dotted with foreign press and Internet superstars, including the Facehunter (aka Yvan Rodic) and Bryanboy. Fresh off an epic flight from the Philippines, where he spent a single day after being away for all of January, Bryan was instantly mobbed by enthusiastic Brazilian press, to whom he doled out his nascent impressions of Brazilian style.

The night closed with a show from fast fashion brand Triton, who gave their teeny bopper fans (along with plenty of grown adults) something to scream about as Paris Hilton sailed out in the first look. Afterward, a high-profile Brazilian editor admitted to being embarrassed by her compatriots’ exuberance, pointing out that in Paris, the audience would never get that excited. They certainly wouldn’t, and that’s part of what makes Brazil so much fun.