Bom Retiro, a neighbourhood in São Paulo, Brazil, is famous for having an innovative culture shaped by migration and textile production. For trans-led label DYSTOPIC, this made it the ideal location for its Camuflagem Rastreada runway show, which converted “waste, discarded fabrics and elements of city life into new clothes and objects.”
The event was held at the historic neoclassical building, Oficina Cultural Oswald de Andrade. Here, guests were invited to discover a collection of striking garments that played with images of camouflage set against brash, vibrant colour. While some looks were made up of grey earthy tones and stone-like material, others were entirely constructed from stretchy fabrics with differing prints, ranging from tie-dye to leopard, representing the liveliness of a fragmented city that houses a vast range of people with converging stories, identities and backgrounds.
The beauty looks were equally experimental. Make-up artists Holland, Anddy Willians, Caco Tavares and Matheus Padilha applied lipstick haphazardly around some models’ mouths, while others clown-inspired bases with stars painted on their faces or their skin painted blue. There were rat prosthetics by Acauâ Malta and headpieces created from melted-down phones. Hair, meanwhile, had several sources of inspiration. Alikah, Samya and Kelly were all backstage giving models everything from long ‘bussdown’ wigs to crimson red braids twirled up in space buns. “Like species evolving to survive, our bodies develop strategies to exist within and navigate the urban landscape,” says DYSTOPIC director and founder Ratzz Daniel. The clothing and the beauty, Daniel says, represent “adaption, resistance and the ways our bodies transform the spaces they inhabit.”
When it came to the camouflaged clothes themselves, they represented themes of survival “through the experiences of trans and dissident individuals,” continues Daniel. Marginalised people have often felt compelled to “camouflage” themselves to survive. The show (created in collaboration with trans-run production company GELO CC) challenges this by exploring which bodies are allowed to be seen, how they’re perceived and the spaces they’re given permission to occupy.
“Brazil has been marked by intense political polarisation,” Daniel explains. “Far-right rhetoric has risen in popularity,” which frequently threatens LGBTQ+ rights. The country’s trans population “remains subject to a landscape of violence and vulnerability that cannot be separated from broader political struggles,” Daniel adds. In a survey by Brazilian human rights organisation ANTRA, researchers found that it was becoming increasingly difficult to monitor violence against trans people. “Fewer recorded incidents do not mean less violence,” Bruna Benevides, the organisation’s president, outlined. “On the contrary, there is an intense movement to institutionalise transphobia.”
Fashion and culture can be used to fight back against these forms of discrimination and exclusion. “They’re tools for visibility, autonomy, and societal change,” Daniel says. The public setting of DYSTOPIC’s show gives the group a platform to expand the presence of trans stories within Brazil and demand the recognition, protection and dignity they deserve.