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Strolling along Rua Oscar Freire or Rua Bela Cintra in the Jardins (garden) district of São Paulo, Brazil, you could be on any one of the world's great fashion boulevards, in Milan, Paris, New York or London.

Big names in international couture – Armani, Prada, Versace, Cartier – shoulder alongside one another on the tree-lined avenues. Store windows are lively, colorful and loaded with expensive mannequins. Sales associates are chic and glamorous, pleasant and knowledgeable but just a touch aloof.

Fashion apparel alternates with elegant home furnishings. Brazilians love clothing, but also have a taste for home decor and spend lavishly on lamps, tables, chairs, artwork and accessories. (“People stay home,” says Brazilian retail architect Manoel Lima, “because it's hot here, and also because it's safer at home than out on the street. They tend to their homes, they decorate and they entertain.”)

So yes, you could be in Paris. But it's clear that you're in Brazil – in cosmopolitan São Paulo or in colorful Rio de Janeiro – because Brazilians' fashion and retailing sensibilities are unmistakeably their own, executed with confidence and flair.

INDIGENOUS DESIGN

In Forum, a high-end specialty apparel store on Rua Oscar Freire with sleek lines and minimalistic touches, a wide staircase of locally handmade red tiles ascends to an entire wall composed of Brazilian wood, vines and mud. Elsewhere in the store are a handmade carpet of Brazilian fabric, cowhide-covered stools and raw wood tables. Throughout the store are such indigenous materials as hemp, rattan and bamboo.

This is not to say that Brazilian retailing seeks to emulate primitive art. In Forum, as elsewhere in the São Paulo neighborhood, the predominant materials are glass, chrome, marble and highly polished wood. And expenses aren't spared. In the Giorgio Armani boutique (one of a handful around the world), marble was shipped in from Europe to create the beige, smooth silestone walls the designer insisted upon.

Brazilians, living in a land touched by the beauty of stately mountains and a ridiculously blue sea, revel in good times. Bad times are never entirely forgotten, though. Merchandise signs in the window, even on fashionable Oscar Freire, often say something like 58/5. In other words, a purchase will cost 58 real over five installments. Pinning down the terms on installment buying is often necessary in a country that has gone through periods of such rapid and steep inflation.

BRAZIL, THE COUNTRY

It's a reminder that strolling on Oscar Freire, or on the boutique-lined avenues parallelling the beaches of Rio, is seeing only a small slice of Brazil. This is, after all, the sixth-largest country in the world, with 3.3 million square miles of land mass, more than 184 million people and a 4700-mile coastline. It's a country full of big cities and dusty small towns, of mountains, rain forests, plains, farms, jungles, ranches, government-protected Indian reservations and poverty-infested urban neighborhoods – in other words, much like the United States (or any other big, diverse country).

It hasn't, of course, had the welcoming economy or political climate of the U.S. It has instead had a tumultuous history, ping-ponging back and forth between attempts at democracy and military dictatorships. The dictators fled Brasilia, the capital city, nearly 20 years ago, and the current president is from the impoverished working class. Even so, instability seems to be the constant. Brazil has been deeply in debt and has experienced runaway inflation, though it now seems under control.

Economic stability is what you sense on a Saturday night at Rio's Fashion Mall. Families with small children in tow vie for space with exuberant teens. It could be Westchester Mall or the Beverly Center or your local shopping plaza. Even some of the brands are familiar: Timberland, Nike, Dockers. But the stores are smaller than in U.S. malls, and so windows are more important and interior space is more densely merchandised.

It appears to be an enclosed mall until you take the escalator to the top floor and realize it's an open-air center and you've been strolling under the stars all evening.

WALKING THE MALL

But that also means strolling under the hot sunlight all day. So enclosed malls are a popular venue for Brazilian urban-dwellers. Morumbi, in the middle of teeming São Paulo, is an enclosed mall with more than 400 stores. But Morumbi is also a fashion center, with international brand names, local designer shops and expensive jewelry, home goods and cosmetics. Designer apparel is so luxe in Morumbi that Brazilian designer Carlos Miele, whose new high-end boutique created such a stir in New York last year, is represented here only with a mid-level store called M. Officer.

In such an intensely competitive environment, Morumbi retailers pay particular attention to representing their brand through store design. So Vivara, a local jewelry chain competing aggressively with national icons H. Stern and Amsterdam Sauer, has created an open, non-intimidating space (no doors, no obvious security guard) and double-merchandised windows, facing in as well as out. “The more merchandise in the window, the more you sell,” is the mantra of chain owner Nelson Kaufman.

Cosmetics retailer Polimaia has introduced a wide, open-sell environment new to Brazil (where security is an issue). The store features such atmospheric touches as a pool by the entrance inlaid with graphics that can be replaced for each new merchandising campaign; and “fashion TV,” a group of four 60-inch rear-screen Toshiba TVs with seductive, sexy, suggestive programming. The salespeople, by contrast, are dressed not in fashion garb but in lab garments, to imply service and professionalism.

Edgy Brazilian designer Ricardo Almeda has created a name for himself as the dresser of the country's president. His storefront in Morumbi is equally edgy.

And children's retailer Puc has recently added color, excitement and interactivity to what had been a pale, light-wood interior. “The owners had told us, 'but the product is so colorful,' ” says Laura Falzoni, one of Brazil's leading visual merchandisers, “but we did the prototype and they loved it. You need excitement to draw the mothers, and then to keep the children occupied so the mothers can shop.”

Morumbi's fashion floor has a number of brand names familiar to U.S. retailers: Timberland, Dockers, Levi's and Tommy Hilfiger. But U.S. brands and retailers don't do especially well in Brazil. “People here don't understand what 'Timberland' even refers to,” notes architect Lima, “and don't relate to Tommy Hilfiger or Nautica.”

Forum, on Rua Oscar Freire, has a startling red-tiled staircase leading to a wall of wood, vines and mud, all primitive local materials. The slick, minimalistic merchandising is typical of fashion stores on the street.

Instead, the floor is full of European brands – Montblanc, Hugo Boss, Armani, L'Occitane, Jacadi – but moreso of Brazilian design names: Alexandre Herchcovitch, Gloria Coelho, Carlota Joakino, Victor Hugo, Andrea Soletto and Ricardo Almeda, the designer who dresses the president of Brazil.

In good times and in bad, Brazilian fashion and art have always been a statement for the culture and aesthetics of this vibrant South American country. This is not a people that hides its pride. It seeks to express itself openly and spiritedly.

Childrenswear retailer Puc employs attention-getting colors and props to draw both mothers and their children. The concept was by F&AL (Falzoni and Alvas Lima), São Paulo design firm.

When former farmer and laborer Luiz Inácio da Silva was elected president, his first initiative was to buy a new government plane for his travels to foreign capitals. He no longer wanted Brazil to appear internationally as a second-rate country. As in so many other aspects of this land – with its natural beauty and the beauty of its people – appearance counts.

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