Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Winter Fashion In Rio de Janeiro: The City of Fur Trimmed bikinis.

Under the tropics the arrival of winter is usually a nonevent. The State of Rio de Janeiro, which straddles the Tropic of Capricorn, is the exception to the rule. In the state capital São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro, Rio for short, the climate doesn’t make winter, fashion does. Women’s fashion, that is. With the strong encouragement of the local fashion industry, the Carioca (inhabitants of Rio) women have created winter for the sake of changing their wardrobe.
All year round, Rio enjoys temperatures ranging from 20° to 30° Celsius. Based on my personal experience, we tend to sweat twelve months a year! According to the Lonely Planet guide of Brazil, the Carioca winter occurs between June and August. Temperatures stay in the mid-20s, and very rarely drop to single digit at night. However, for Northern Hemisphere visitors who are used to harsh temperature swings, winter in Rio comes and goes hardly noticed. I have recently been spending Southern Hemisphere summers in Rio. I then pack off for Europe as soon as Rio women start wearing darker colours. In the 1970s, when I lived and worked in Rio, I remember wearing the same summer clothes all year round. I added a little cardigan in the evening and a light raincoat when it rained. Nowadays, dressing habits have changed dramatically.
Rio women take their winter, albeit one of an inoffensive variety, very seriously. By mid-March, Carioca shop windows start displaying winter fashion. The bright and vivid hues of summer give way to all shades of brown, olive green, bronze, purple and black. Foliage brown seems to be the “in” colour of this season’s winter glamour. On the Paris or New York winter catwalks, these colours are just as fundamental as woolen coats, tartan skirts, furry hats and suede boots. Yet, in Rio, the cuts and styles which were popular in summer seem to have been recycled. An untrained eye can easily dismiss winter fashion as summer fashion in darker colours.
Leave it to the local fashonistas to spot the fundament differences in a teeny-tiny dress, for instance. In addition to clothes, shoes and accessories are offered in matching dark colours. Fashion is becoming big business in Brazil. If Rio is the indisputable leader of summer style, it still cannot compete with colder São Paulo, the trendsetter of winter fashion. Carioca fashion victims will fall over themselves to outdo their Paulista sisters. There is no limit to their creativity, except excess.


Only in Rio can one buy a winter bikini! The winter number is not a more modestly cut swimwear. It is the standard Ipanema beach bikini, but cut in a darker print. Excess in bikini fashion rarely equates with more fabric! I spotted a fur-trimmed string bikini in the window of one of Rio’s leading bikini shops. As boots are the must-have winter item for fashonistas, soon Cariocas will strut their stuff in Ipanema in fur-trimmed bikinis and matching fur-lined boots!
For me, brainwashed by European prejudice, I find winter fashion without winter weather rather incongruous. I scoff at the idea that women can enslave themselves to designers’ whims, and follow their fashion diktat. As there is no obvious link between climate and clothes, the main purpose of wearing winter clothes in Rio is to make a fashion statement, and possibly answer an emotional craving. I strongly believe that the Carioca designers have something up their sleeves-literally.
A recent issue of the US Vogue magazine ran a visionary article on the probable impact of global warming on fashion. The author was lamenting the likely disappearance of “seasons as we know them.” By creating the illusion of season change, haven’t the Rio designers anticipated the impact of climate change? The fashion victims of today may become the fashion gurus of tomorrow.

Beatrice Labonne, Rio de Janeiro. 10 April, 2006.
Revised: 1 February, 2011.

2 comments:

  1. What is exactly an "Ipanema beach bikini"? To me it is the "dental floss" model, which by being nearly nothing, it shows nearly everything. Well, that is the "everything" for the Carioca.

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