São Paulo Fashion Week

The Sao Paulo Fashion Week (SPFW) is a fashion event, held at Ibirapuera Park, in Sao Paulo. It began in 1996, when the event was known as Morumbi Fashion Brazil. It won the current name in January 2001. Today, the event is the most important fashion show in Latin America and appears among the major fashion weeks in the world, along with Paris, Milan, New York and London. Besides structuring the whole textile industry of the country, the event has been marked by campaigns for hunger, for the prevention of cancer and Aids, recycling of waste, education and more recently celebrated the centenary of Japanese diaspora to Brazil (Spring Collection/2008).

It was in 1995 that the Morumbi Fashion shook the world of Brazilian fashion. In the beginning, they were four parades daily with audience of 300 people. During this period the world took notice of models such Gisele Bündchen, Isabeli Fontana,Ana Claudia Michels, among others. Many names of designers came up at that time also, as Ricardo Almeida, Reinaldo Lourenço, Ronaldo Fraga. Years before, international brands such as Chanel and Versace first appeared in Brazil due to the opening of imports of the Collor government. Business owners were forced to invest in technology, machinery and labour-Expertee to compete with the foreign brands that grew instantly in Brazil. That brought a significant change to brazilian fashion as whole.

Today's event happens twice a year, one in January, featuring the fall collection, and June with spring collection, with its all-famous brazilian lines of beachwear. In the first ten years, the investments grew from 600 thousand reais to more than five million in 2006. It increased from 21 to 46 the number of houses participants and their audience also grew to about 100 thousand people. In 1996, the event had attracted thirty thousand visitors.

Some famous designers that show collections in SPFW are Tufi Duek, Alexandre Herchcovitch and Amir Slama.