SPFW N60: Boldstrap

Boldstrap, the label led by Peu Andrade, arrives at the 60th edition of São Paulo Fashion Week reaffirming its vocation for provocation. Known for turning fetish into aesthetic language and sensuality into a tool of political affirmation, the label presents its new high summer collection exploring the borders between desire and discomfort, between the coast and the city. The show proposes a narrative that translates the routine of the holidays, that alternation between the sunlit day and the endless night, as a continuous performance of bodily exposure and personal freedom.

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The proposal comes away from the more obvious readings of summer. There are no bikinis or trunks as a starting point, but a reflection on dressing in movement, on the body that moves between different spaces, carrying salt, sweat and shine as ornaments. The pieces cross references from the beach, the club and urban daily life with the irony and hedonism that are Boldstrap's signature. The visual starting point comes from the prints created by the Russian illustrator Draw Me Denis, a gay artist living in China in self-imposed exile, fleeing the political repression of his country. His line mixes digital eroticism and tropical nature, creating a hot, vibrant and subversive iconography. The drawings appear on sarongs, T-shirts and shorts, working as a link between summer and parties, between the real body and the virtual body.

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Peu Andrade revisits materials already known to the label, latex, silk and flat fabrics, but widens their possibilities, partly abandoning the use of knits to experiment with textures, shine and transparency. Latex, which in earlier collections stood for urban fetish, now gets a sunlit treatment: it appears in versions with 3D applications, prints and surface effects that recall warmed skin, the touch of the sun. Transparent sequin, one of the collection's leads, works as a metaphor for the illuminated body, the one that shows and hides itself, like a censored image in the digital age. The collection alternates moments of freshness and intensity. There are surf shorts, tie-side bikinis and micro trunks that reinterpret the codes of sport and the beach, combined with baby tees in the saturated colours of sunset. In contrast come bandage dresses, structured corsets, ripped jeans revealing high-cut briefs and tops with glinting shine, reaffirming the nocturnal sensuality that marks Boldstrap's identity.

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That tension between the sporting and the glamorous is one of the threads of the visual narrative. The collection seems to propose a “democratisation of fetish”: luxury comes not from the inaccessible, but from the free gesture of dressing as though to celebrate one's own skin. The use of embroidery, stonework and viscose brings sophistication to silhouettes inspired by skaters and surfers of the 2000s, blending youthful ingenuity and adult desire. The result is a hybrid repertoire, between streetwear and performance, between pop desire and the critique of moralism.

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RUNWAY IMAGES 

Credits: Gabriel Cappelletti/ Marcelo Soubhia / Marcelo Soubhia /Ze Takahashi @agfotosite

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