Made in Brazil

Isabeli Fontana photographed by Paulo Vainer for Tufi Duek’s fall/winter 2013 ad campaign.

I loved the collection on the runway, but I wish the new ad campaign lensed by Zee Nunes was more in line with last spring’s beautiful ad campaign shot by Vavá Ribeiro. Osklen is supposed to be effortlessly cool, and there is zero need for trying so hard to look conceptual.

On a side note, Thairine Garcia is yet again the go-to girl for ad campaigns this season in Brazil, also appearing in ads for Colcci, 2nd Floor, and Iódice.

Brazilian lavel Vish unveiled its new website and ad campaign today. The images, featuring newcomers Cristian Pfingstag and Mayara Rubik Marchi, were styled by Henrique Tank and shot by long time collaborator Hugo Toni.

Menswear label Sérgio K.’s most provocative ad campaign to date doesn’t feature actors or top international male models. Instead of some of the world’s hottest guys shot for past seasons, the new campaign photographed by long time collaborator Terry Richardson features a cover of Michael Jackson and seven dwarfs in jeans and t-shirts by the Brazilian label.

Controversy is the core of Sérgio K.’s image, and according to creative director Marcelo Sebá, this season’s campaign was designed to make us question the marketing formula used by the vast majority of fashion labels in the country in their ad campaigns nowadays: the association with a celebrity that in most cases has nothing to do with the brand in order to generate media buzz. As a result, there are dozens of basically identical campaigns featuring artists that have no relation to the brand they are representing, hired exclusively for press purposes. Whether or not you get the meaning of the campaign from the ads shot by Richardson, its questioning comes at an important time in Brazilian fashion: with so many international labels and mass retailers establishing presence in the country recently, when are national labels finally going to realize that they need to stop spending massive amounts of money hiring random celebrities to push sales and instead invest that money in actual design value and brand identity? It is about time they start caring about it.

Singer Sky Ferreira is the face of Brazilian accessories label Arezzo for fall, in a campaign photographed by Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin and art directed by Giovanni Bianco. This is the first time the label has tapped the photographer duo to shoot one of its ad campaigns, and hopefully will be one of many.