Brazilian brands focused on sustainability display their new collections at the BEFW Milan

The Brasil Eco Fashion Week, BEFW, the first fashion and sustainability week in Latin America holds its fifth edition on September 24 and 25, 2021, at the Milan Fashion Week, in Italy.

BEFW and Fashion Vibes, a fashion, creativity, and art platform, present fashion shows by Brazilian brands that are committed to sustainability, social and environmental initiatives, and textile innovation.

The platform promotes fashion shows and showrooms during the Milan Fashion Week to position eight Brazilian brands and stylists in the international market.

“Brazil is rich in raw materials but also in creativity, which is based on the cultural diversity it possesses. It is a country with a unique worldview and our objective is to demonstrate the development in this direction, promoting designers who value their roots, their culture, and incredible energy in their collections,” says Yulia Palchykova, director of Fashion Vibes.

Founded in 2017, the platforms promote diverse raw materials and production processes for the sustainable fashion market. Brasil Eco Fashion Week held around 250 activities such as fashion shows, talks, lectures, and workshops involving 150 speakers with local and international guests from the areas of business, creation, production, innovation, and technology for fashion.

In 2019, the last edition of the in-person format brought together over 150 companies, including fashion brands, suppliers of industry inputs and innovative companies. The following year, the fourth fashion week received more than 80 companies in the online format.

“In addition to giving visibility to socially responsible fashion brands in Brazil, the idea of our event each year is to hold an in-depth debate, distribute information, propose new business models with the adoption of ethical and responsible practices in the textile industry and fashion markets,” explains Rafael Moraes, executive director of the event.

Fashion Label Brasil at the BEFW Milan

The event’s lineup features the brands Catarina Mina and Gissa Bicalho from the Brazilian fashion internationalization project called Fashion Label Brasil.

Catarina Mina

“We believe in a different kind of fashion, focused on the ones producing and concentrating its efforts on questioning, rethinking, reflecting, and making decisions that take the collective into account. Fashion that sustains itself in a future based on collaboration.”

The Olê Rendeiras project, a partnership between Catarina Mina and QAIR Brasil, an independent energy producer, presents the ‘Litorânea, caderno e memórias do mar’ collection at the Brasil Eco Fashion Week.

“Litorânea comes to that bobbin lace is not just the lace from Ceará, it’s the lace from the seashore.”

The initiative values, reframes, and perpetuates bobbin, the lace from Ceará, with transparent and responsible handcrafter fashion.

“Indeed, the bobbin lace is memory, but it is mainly future. This is the knowledge that will be seen on the runway, revealing this ancestral work as a possible path for a new generation of female artisans. It is art that makes them go even further, without losing the sound and smell of the sea. So, it is based on this extended reach that Olê crosses the ocean, breaks borders, and lands in Italy for one of the biggest fashion weeks in the world.”