Sao Paolo Fashion Week: Funny Does It

PHOTOS BY ANA FINEL HONIGMAN

Pretension is poison to sex appeal, which is why Cavalera’s hilariously self-aware catwalk show was so legitimately cool. The kick-off to Sao Paolo’s Fashion Week was staged in the gritty upstairs terrace of the Galeria do Rock, a haggard seventies-style rock-and-roll mall. As a live band played ear-splitting Guns & Roses classics, models stormed past the closed tattoo-parlors, seedy sex shops and vinyl stores sporting classically casual rock-club gear with lots of denim, tiny black dresses, bald-eagle patterns and snake-skin mini-skirts. A few of the girls also streamed green or blue hair-extensions to amplify the adolescent hardcore vibe. Amid minimal make-up, the true brilliance of the styling and the collection was its in-your-face authenticity. Adding to the undramatic drama were a few heavy-metal couples holding hands who meandered between the models, joined by glossy stripper-style glamazons with a beaming pock-marked slimeball sandwiched between them, and a dazed looking young man who barely clocked the hot chicks passing him as he wandered aimlessly, clearly in need of no method acting to evoke out-of-itness. Cavelera is known as a highly popular high-street brand with a consistent, loyal awareness of its roots in Brazilian street culture, and so the show’s models show looked like especially attractive kids who had saved up for high-quality versions of their normal streetwear. It was all accessible—not affected. In response to anyone who disapproved, the models could borrow a line from Axl Rose: “You may not like our integrity, yeah. We’ll build a world out of anarchy! Oh yeah!”