Become a Vogue Business Member to receive unlimited access to Member-only reporting and insights, our Beauty and TikTok Trend Trackers, Member-only newsletters and exclusive event invitations.
As Brazil’s Pará state prepares to host the United Nations climate conference COP30 in Belém in November, local fashion designers are reckoning with a changing industry and its complex colonial past.
Ahead of the conference, many local designers are hoping to leverage the spotlight to break into global markets, which have remained inaccessible in the past due to limited investment and infrastructure, making it difficult to compete with more established European and American brands. Others are concerned that the increased attention will be a gateway to further exploitation — of both the Amazon rainforest and the Indigenous people living in and around it. One of the main concerns is cultural appropriation without financial compensation, something that has plagued the local industry for decades.
There is a lot at stake, says Karina Gonçalves, professor of fashion at the Santa Teresa Faculty in Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state and the largest city in the Amazon region. “We want to be the central characters of our own narrative, not just be exploited as aesthetics,” she says.
The Amazon forest region has a thorny relationship with fashion. The area is a vitally important biodiversity hub and carbon sink (meaning it absorbs more carbon than it emits, helping to keep climate change at bay). Despite this, the rainforest has been under siege for decades now, falling prey to extractive and exploitative practices such as land grabbing and deforestation. Fashion supply chains — particularly those tapping into bovine leather — have contributed heavily to this, despite concerted efforts to distance the industry from deforestation in recent years. Indigenous communities throughout Amazonia have been caught in the crossfires, with many fighting to protect the forest, and others becoming reluctant middlemen for its destruction.
Some global brands have successfully partnered with local artisans. In 2016, Brazilian brand Osklen drew inspiration from the graphic patterns of the Asháninka community, forming a relationship and paying the community royalties to use their iconography. Off the back of this partnership, the Asháninka people were able to build a school in their village. Last year, non-profit Conservation International launched a guide to mending fashion’s relationship with Indigenous communities, in partnership with Kering and Textile Exchange.
New guidelines set out to help the industry avoid cultural exploitation as well as forge better sustainability strategies.
But for the most part, when the global fashion industry has engaged with local crafts and Indigenous communities, it has left a bitter taste. “I know of many brands that tried to buy Indigenous creations just to copy them. Some have tried to take our artisans and get them to work for minimum wage,” says Karina Penha, a member of the Colabora Moda Sustentável initiative, a local platform that discusses sustainable change in the fashion sector. Others have seen similar patterns repeat. “There have been many cases in which an embroiderer from a traditional community sells a piece of embroidery for as little as $6 and it is used in a shirt that gets resold in a luxury store in Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo for $60. The money those artisans lost could have helped their communities,” notes Alcimara Braga, a fashion designer, educator and activist based in Belém. “[Some brands], even national ones, have come here, taken our local seeds and raw materials, learnt to craft natural fibres, and left us in the dark,” adds Gonçalves.
Ahead of COP30, Amazonian designers are hoping for change — starting with recognition of local talent and better relationships with global collaborators. “In northern Brazil, we have a lot of creatives that have worked for many years, but [our success] has always been kept at bay,” says Braga. “Business people see COP30 as a market opportunity. The only concern is that this ‘boom’ will lead to cultural appropriation, and our traditional knowledge will [once again] be taken in an inappropriate way.”
Investing in education
Designer Sioduhi Waíkhᵾn is a member of the Pira-Tapuya community, harking from the Alto Rio Negro region, the northernmost tip of Amazonas state, where Brazil meets Colombia. His brand, Sioduhi Studio, is based on the concept of ‘Indigenous Futurism’, coined by Anishinaabe literature scholar Grace Dillon to explore how colonialism shaped the past and lives on through new technology. Waíkhᵾn works closely with Indigenous artisans in the municipalities of São Gabriel da Cachoeira in Alto Rio Negro, and Novo Airão, close to Manaus. Among his collaborators are his 78-year-old aunt and 47-year-old cousin, who each work with accessories brand Ínaru Eyawa to create fashion items using the fibres they extract from Tucum, spiny palm trees native to the Amazon.
His work involves more listening than talking, he says. “The communities I partner with are furthering a knowledge that might go extinct soon, if people like me, and other designers, do not show its importance — not only on the catwalk, but for their economy as well.” In a bid to translate fashion partnerships into meaningful economic gain for Indigenous communities, Waíkhᵾn makes an effort to pass on some of his business knowledge to his collaborators. His objective is to give them a view of the whole production chain, teach them about brand strategy, product flow, customer relations for high-value-added fashion products, community management and pricing, he says. He has strong reasons for doing so. “The fashion business is very aggressive to us — racialised peoples in the Amazon,” he says. “Most artisans don’t know the real value of their creations. It really is a process of re-education.”
Waíkhᵾn is not the only one investing in education to further the local fashion scene. MI Moda Indígena was co-founded in 2017 by Rebeca Ferreira, a designer from the Mura and Munduruku communities in Manaus. It works across three pillars: producing Indigenous fashion, which is mostly sold abroad; training new creatives through a free five-month course; and producing fashion events and shows. The project staged an off-schedule show at London Fashion Week in 2023 and 2024. Afterwards, Ferreira says interest boomed, with international press coverage spanning Latin America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Proper training is a key bottleneck holding back Amazonian talent, says Ferreira. During its five-month training programme, MI offers budding Indigenous designers full-scale support, from design and tailoring to business, marketing and sales. The programme runs with support from Sebrae, a Brazilian micro and small business support service. “We partner with many experts in their fields to offer the best training we can, working towards financial independence for our students,” she explains. “We want to be a facilitator for our peers to live off their culture.”
When the pandemic eased, Ferreira and her mom, co-founder Seanne Oliveira, took their project to the leaders of Parque das Tribos, Brazil’s largest Indigenous community living outside of forest-based Indigenous villages. Located in Manaus, the community houses members of 35 different Indigenous groups. In November 2021, it played host to the first in-person edition of MI’s training programme; 32 people representing 15 Indigenous groups attended. The second edition, held in early 2024, and the third edition, which kicked off last week, each garnered a further 25 participants. With MI’s local fashion shows, the programme has become well known in Manaus and there is a waitlist for future editions.
Despite the strong appetite for training, there are challenges. Younger trainees are often impatient to start their own businesses, but often give up at the first sign of obstacles, says Ferreira. “Even if they find the business more challenging, older members succeed more often, because they have the patience to go on despite the ups and downs,” she says.
Championing local crafts on the global stage
When brands partner with Indigenous communities and benefit from their crafts, their names and contributions should be acknowledged, celebrated and fairly rewarded, says Ferreira. Increasingly, homegrown brands are role modelling this dynamic, including Brasília-based Tamã, a brand formed from a collaborative initiative featuring designs from Indigenous and African descendants in traditional communities, known as Qulombolas. Expenses are listed alongside products for transparency, and revenues are shared equally among the creators. Tamã buys illustrations and paintings from Kayapó women, who receive a share for each creation sold, while the revenue from some T-shirt sales supports associations defending the Indigenous cause.
Maurício Duarte, a Kaixana designer, is the only Indigenous name on the official schedule at São Paulo Fashion Week, which was created in 1996 as Morumbi Fashion Brasil and rebranded in 2001, running every February and September. Duarte debuted in 2023 with a collection titled ‘Tramas’ (translating to “weavings”), using natural fibres from native plants like aruma (an Amazonian species of bamboo) and turning them into luxury clothes and accessories showcasing Indigenous basket-weaving techniques. Duarte worked with artisans in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, benefitting hundreds of families from over 12 Indigenous groups. The cast was exclusively composed of Black and Indigenous models. At the time, Duarte told Vogue Brazil that the choice was intended to symbolise the recovery of richness historically taken from these groups.
Public figures across Brazil have picked up on the cause, wearing Duarte’s creations for high-profile events. Last year, Indigenous thinker, writer and activist Ailton Krenak wore Maurício Duarte to receive the Knight of the Legion of Honour insignia at the French Embassy in Brasília. Indigenous Peoples minister Sônia Guajajara has also worn the label. “Styling for these people — respected artists, musicians, actors and thinkers — shows that our reach as a brand is also an artistic, cultural and intellectual contribution to Brazil,” says Duarte.
Now, he’s trying to use the same approach to break onto the international stage. At Milan Fashion Week last September, Duarte gifted supermodel Naomi Campbell with an aruma belt during her book signing. He did the same for Angelina Jolie earlier this year, when the actor visited Brazil to meet with Indigenous activists in Amazonas and São Paulo. “It is in moments like these,” he posted on Instagram that day, “that I reinforce the importance of believing in our ideas and dreams.”
Gaining attention, minimising impact
Many of the Indigenous communities in the Amazon region have nurtured their craft traditions over centuries by carefully controlling how much they extract from the forest, and balancing creativity with conversation. As Indigenous designers look for global recognition and international brands explore partnerships with local communities, the challenge is how to keep these principles going.
“Our environmental problems would be even greater if we had a large clothing and apparel industry in the Amazon. We have lots of rivers here, and they would likely get polluted with dyes and chemicals from fashion production. What we need is higher valuing of natural and local materials,” says Braga. Forging more equitable partnerships that involve Indigenous communities in decision-making could help the fashion industry to avoid negative environmental impacts. “Nothing about us should be without us,” she adds, quoting a well-known motto that originated from the disability rights movement.
For Penha, the key will be growing the Amazonian fashion scene on a small scale. “There are way too many injustices already — climate inequalities, environmental racism, slave-like work,” she says. “We must stop Amazonian fashion from being another of these injustices.”
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
