November is the Month of Black Consciousness and Salvador, Bahia, will hold its second Afro Fashion Day with 70 models and 50 name brands on display

Note from BW of Brazil: It’s here again! In fact, it’s been here for seven days already. I speak here about the month of November which is celebrated throughout Brazil as the Month of Black Consciousness. November is also a lively month will all sorts of displays, expos, marches, performances, lectures, etc. all around the theme of black consciousness. The month has always been regularly featured here a BW of Brazil, with the only thing I regret being that, as only one blog, it simply isn’t possible to cover all of the events that will be taking place across the country this month. And one of those events that will surely produce a lot of excitement and hundreds of great photos will be the second annual Afro Fashion Day in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil’s center of African Culture! Check out the brief write up below!

Second Afro Fashion Day will have 70 models and 50 brands

The highlight will be at sunset: a parade in the Praça da Cruz Caída (square), in the Historical Downtown, with black models and guests as protagonists, as well as surprise show

By Verena Paranhos

Empowerment, identidade negra (black identity), fashion, music and even stronger training activities. This is the proposal of the second edition of Afro Fashion Day, a project conceived by the Correio newspaper to mark the Day of Black Consciousness, celebrated on the 20th.

This year, the free event has been extended for the weekend: it will start on Saturday the 19^th at 9am, and will end on Sunday night the 20^th. The highlight will be at sunset: a parade in Praça da Cruz Caída in the Historic Downtown, with black models and guests as protagonists, as well as surprise show.

“Afro Fashion Day has entered into the Salvador calendar. It represents for Correio to come out of the pages and digital environment to live experiences with the reader. We always want to invest in this type of project that has an identity with our land and with our brand,” Correio’s manager of Digital Media and Marketing, Fábio Góis.

Programming

It extends to Praça da Sé, which will receive, on the 20^th, a fair with more than 50 exhibitors. The booths will sell handicrafts, accessories and clothes from the Bahian brands that will ascend the catwalk, in addition to other creative ones.

The workshops were also expanded and will take place in the Senac (1) of the Chile street. There will be ten courses and lectures on Saturday morning and afternoon, on topics such as empowerment, black beauty and entrepreneurship.

Another highlight of the program is the Visu exhibition in the Pelourinho area with images of stylish people that will circulate in the streets of the Historic Center. The open-air show is curated by Paula Magalhães, publisher of Bazaar, and Léo Amaral, fashion producer of the Sunday supplement of Correio, with photographs by Angeluci Figueiredo.

Street fashion

With the theme O Grito das Ruas (The Scream of the Streets), 50 designers and brands – 23 more than in 2015 – pieces inspired by Afro-Bahian culture will be presented on the catwalk. Also the number of models and guests that will parade the looks has grown: there will be 70, 25 more than last year.

“It’s a showcase for the local market. Many of the creators will produce exclusive pieces with the streetwear footprint. This has much to do with the moment that Salvador is experiencing, in which the young public has occupied the squares more. The people who are more on the street and have a lot of style,” says Fagner Bispo, responsible for curatorship of brands and models, along with Gabriela Cruz, publisher of Bazaar.

Consolidation

The designer, stylist and researcher Carol Barreto, who is participating for the second time in the project, believes that the event has repercussions throughout the production chain of fashion: from companies to university training. “The name Afro Fashion Day also carries a political responsibility to be critical about what fashion we produce, to what extent we hire black models. Last year’s reflection on this is the extent to which we have taken that into our personal and professional conduct.”

In its first edition, Afro Fashion Day gained international recognition: the project came in second place in the Associação Internacional de Mídias Noticiosas (International News Media Association or INMA), in the category of best use of an event for the construction of a news-making brand, competing with a vehicle of the United States and another from Australia. “Bahia is Brazil’s biggest breeding ground and Correio is a protagonist in this story. It is an event that has come to stay and will certainly become an icon of the city, such as the Festival de Verão (Summer Festival), Réveillon (New Year’s Eve) and São João,” says Correio executive director Roberto Gazzi.

Note

1. SENAC, or the Nacional de Aprendizagem Comercial, meaning the National Service of Commercial Learning is a Brazilian institution of professional education open to the whole society

Source: Correio 24 Horas