A row of ripe orange pineapples with green stalks, blossoms of fresh white orchids amid verdant foliage. A tranquil sunset of turquoise green, fuchsia pink and deep purple, a flock of yellow-beaked toucans, bright red parrots and lurid green macaws.

Is this how you see Brazil? A rainbow-coloured collection, a collaboration between Adidas Originals and the Rio de Janeiro-based fashion company FARM RIO, thinks so.

The collection references the vibrant colours and exuberance traditionally associated with Brazil while looking for affiliation with international fashion trends. It articulates some of the images of Rio constructed by the outside world – images that contribute to its enduring appeal as the ultimate exotic tourist destination.

One of the best ways of tracing how the international image of Brazil has developed is perhaps the popular journal National Geographic. Here it’s easy to see the effects of globalisation on how the rest of the world perceives Brazilian dress and of course, by extension, Brazilians.

National Geographic has positioned itself as a voice of authority on Brazil within mainstream American print media. It offers what purports to be an unprejudiced window onto the world.

But the magazine has a somewhat uneasy past, and is viewed critically by scholars because of this. Historically it has quite a reputation for its distinctive, quasi-anthropological outlook. Until relatively recently, it’s argued that its subjects were rendered into dehumanised objects, a spectacle of the unknown. In doing so the magazine pursued a kind of US-driven cultural imperialism

But a turn can be seen in the late 1980s. Pictures in National Geographic’s centenary edition in September 1988 trace the beginnings of a different view, driven by globalisation. We see white lace European-influenced dresses worn by followers of Candomble in Salvador da Bahia, colourful bikinis worn by bronzed women of all shapes and sizes on Copacabana beach and an increased adoption of sportswear brands by indigenous people living in remote areas of the Amazon.

These images have resisted the processes of objectification, appropriation and stereotyping frequently associated with the rectangular yellow border. This is because they provide evidence of a fluid population, a various one, rather than the one dimensional images of old. The people in these pictures have selected preferred elements of American and European culture and used it to fashion their Brazilian identities.

So National Geographic has transcended its own popular stereotypes by documenting an increasingly multilayered image of Brazil for an international readership, which since the launch of National Geographic Brasil in 2000 has also included Brazil.

This shift in the representation of Brazilian dress is mirrored in other international media. And Brazilian consumers have become more critical and demanding about fashion produced at home as they are continually exposed to international tastes and trends online.

Brazil used to be notorious for copying the prints, ideas, models and colours of European and American fashion design. In the 1920s and 1930s, Brazilian women used to go around wearing expensive furs in Rio and Sao Paulo, because that’s what glamorous European women wore. But since the early 1990s, designers such as Ronaldo Fraga, Isabela Capeto, Alexandre Herchcovitch and Lino Villaventura have produced work that draws inspiration from Brazilian style and culture – and suits the climate. Improved political stability and economic growth have provided the conditions for these designers to flourish, and achieve international recognition.

Trend forecasters at Adidas clearly predicted the endless opportunities and cultural capital provided by Rio de Janeiro, the Cidade Maravilhosa, with its rainforest-covered peaks, sparkling coastline and spectacular views. The city is expecting 600,000 foreign tourists during the World Cup, not to mention the Summer Olympic Games in 2016.

But Adidas is not merely cashing in. The collection promotes a new way to view Brazil, a far cry from Adidas’s other recent (hyper-sexualised) tropical foray. As one of the main sponsors for the World Cup, the brand released two t-shirt designs in February 2014. One depicted a dark-haired Brazilian woman on Copacabana beach, dressed in a tiny thong bikini under the heading “lookin’ to score”. The other announced “I love Brazil” – with an upside-down thong bikini encased within a heart.

Both of the designs were pulled from the brand’s online shop after vehement criticism from the Brazilian tourist board and Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, who tweeted: “Brazil is ready to fight sexual tourism.”

The Adidas Originals/FARM RIO collection bypasses such sexualised stereotypes of Brazil (perhaps under strict instruction from head office). Instead it highlights how multifaceted Brazilian culture is – always borrowing or mixing with outside influences to create something new, something distinctly Brazilian.

The collection has been flying off the racks. And who knows, perhaps we’ll soon spot it in the next National Geographic.

Elizabeth Kutesko does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
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The Japanese-Brazilian Fashion designer Jum Nakao (b. 1966 in Sao Paulo, the second largest Japanese community in the world) is a conceptual designer, meaning that ideas tend to take precedence over function. Nakao’s daring collections, which are characterised by austere, minimal design, monochromatic colours, architectural shapes, and the use of unconventional materials, such as dustbin bags or paper, can be seen to reference his Japanese heritage, and the work of designers Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto in the early 1980s. He has produced many projects that are independent of fashion, and exhibited at art galleries and museums internationally, including Musée Galliera in Paris, MoMu in Antwerp, Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, and most recently, participated in ‘From the Margin to the Edge: Brazilian Art and Design in the twenty-first century’ at Somerset House, London in July 2012.

In the early stages of his career Nakao was interested in computer electronics but moved into fashion in 1983, which he found to be the ideal medium for his artistic production. Clothing occupies the boundary between people and the world, and for Nakao, provides a means of interfering with reality and everyday life. He worked as a tailor for two years, creating clothes for different body types. This training was key to his understanding that ‘everybody has a pattern, every defect has a solution – a process where you can, through more organic and straight lines, compensate and create new shapes’. Designing is a form of problem solving for Nakao and he approaches it in a rational, quasi-scientific manner. From the outset, Nakao has sought ways of designing clothing that addresses contemporary concerns and sensibilities, utilising digital technology and sophisticated, handcraft techniques to establish a dialogue between thread, pattern, the body and its surrounding milieu.

Nakao applies aesthetic and working practices to examine the very nature of fashion, and his designs have attracted a critical and discerning international clientele. An example can be seen in the highly acclaimed collection ‘Costura do Invisible’ (Sewing the Invisible) that showcased at Sao Paulo Fashion Week in summer 2004. Constructed entirely from vegetable paper, Nakao’s haunting and delicate fairy-tale designs were embossed with low and high relief-like patterns, decorated with lace cut-outs meticulously cut by lasers, and assembled by hand into intricate origami folds. Elaborate fashion styles from the nineteenth century were combined with black plastic hats inspired by Playmobile toy figures. Despite over seven hundred hours of manual labour and the use of one ton of paper, following the seven-minute catwalk performance the models created a sensation by ripping up their garments. Nakao has commented on the collection: ‘we destroy everything, to show that there is something more important, something much more lasting than what people see and value at first sight’. The designer has said that he was challenging mass-market perceptions of fashion and commenting on its ephemeral quality. He encouraged discussion and debate amongst the audience by creating something that had numerous interpretative possibilities.  Endowing paper with a newfound meaningfulness, Nakao’s work is resonant with the Portuguese word Gambiarra, which has no English translation but is used colloquially throughout Brazil to refer to a makeshift contraption or improvised solution. Gambiarra is believed to be a direct result of the unpredictability of everyday life in Brazil, in which things often do not occur as planned; this requires Brazilians to be inventive and agile. For Nakao, more than simply a versatile material with many uses, paper becomes a cultural marker indicating a distinctively Brazilian attitude based on making do with what is readily available.