Fashion designer Walter Rodrigues finds himself becoming more and more fascinated by leather’s rustic appeal and he believes it can play an important role in fashion’s circular future.

Walter Rodrigues was born in São Paulo state, where his father ran a team of drovers who moved cattle from place to place in the vast rural spaces of the interior. Mr Rodrigues includes among his favourite possessions a pair of boots that would not have been out of place on those cattle drives. “They speak to my inner cowboy,” he confesses, “even though they are really from Italy. They are by John Galliano. I bought them 11 years ago when Galliano was still designing for men. I love them also because they are very comfortable.”

Cold comfort

He lives in Rio Grande do Sul now, bringing him into the heart, at least in spirit, of the cowboy culture, with all its skilled horsemanship and leathercraft beauty, of the Gauchos. He has chosen not to live in the capital, Porto Alegre, but in another city, Caxias do Sul. He likes it there because it is 800 metres above sea level and the climate is cold; the temperature often falls to zero or lower in winter and some years, in August, it snows.

Many of the locals are the descendants of people who emigrated from northern Italy to Brazil and some of them still speak in Veneto dialect. “You can hear it at the market,” he says, “among the sellers of fruit and vegetables. They speak it to each other, if not to customers like me.” He travels happily, by bus, contemplating the landscape for the two or three hours required to reach Novo Hamburgo or Porto Alegre whenever he needs to see his leather industry contacts.

All of this came up in conversations at the most recent edition of Inspiramais, which took place in Porto Alegre in July. For years, Walter Rodrigues has worked with leather industry bodies CICB and Assintecal as a trends consultant and has helped build up the reputation of Inspiramais as an important meeting point between tanners and finished product designers and brands from Brazil and beyond. 

Return to earth

His overarching idea for the direction designers should take in the second half of 2023 (he prefers to refer to fashion predictions in this way rather than mention seasons of the year, which differ from south to north anyway) is called ‘Terra’ or earth. This immediately points towards the importance of sustainability and circularity, but in fact Walter Rodrigues seems tired of the S-word. “I will be happy when we stop talking about sustainability,” he says, “because it will mean the practice of sustainability has become an integral part of what we do.”

At the same time, he acknowledges the inspiration he has taken from an apocalyptic comment on this subject from erstwhile fashion designer and now full-time artist Helmut Lang. He quotes something the Austrian designer told him, saying that unless we look after the earth, we won’t have a fashion industry at all, and brands won’t have consumers to buy their products. Walter Rodrigues quotes this often and says it should focus minds.

He has been talking about sustainability at events like Inspiramais for seven years now and is yet to become convinced that most consumers have truly embraced the idea of circular fashion. “Sustainability is not in people’s hearts yet,” is how he puts it. “And it has to come from them, from consumers. They have to ask questions about the sustainability of products as they go from shop to shop. That’s how this will reach finished product manufacturers. I think people still need a bit more time before we reach that point.”

Crystal ball

How much more time? If he had a crystal ball, the designer says he is sure it would show that, even if the road towards a circular future is long, there is no turning back now. “I expect a lot of change to take place between now and 2030,” he adds. “You can drive change by hitting people where it hurts, in the pocket. When money comes into it, everything speeds up.” This is a reference to suppliers rather than consumers.

He explains that one development he has witnessed in Brazil involves a major footwear group, Arezzo. It has begun telling suppliers that if they want to continue selling to the group, they are going to have to have in place certification that provides guarantees of sustainability and transparency. “This is something that I find very interesting,” he says. “It shows that there is movement.”

Cowboy legacy

He and his team also chose the name ‘Terra’ after “observing the events that have occurred since 2019”, phenomena such as the covid-19 pandemic that seemed to make the earth stand still and force immediate changes in people’s day-to-day activities. The team wanted to explore how designers and consumers might react and get things moving again after such a “period of apprehension”. They have sought to address questions such as the steps fashion companies can take now to try to re-establish empathy, accessibility and peace, and how they will go about building circularity into their way of doing business.

This time at Inspiramais, Mr Rodrigues also offered a sneak preview of his main theme for the first part of 2024. He calls it ‘Primal’ and this is where his cattle-droving roots show again because he insists “cowboy legacy” has emerged as an important component of his vision for design for the times to come.

There were very early signs of ‘Primal’ at the most recent Inspiramais in the shape of a colourful collection of women’s boots developed by footwear brand Schutz, part of the aforementioned Arezzo group. Using leather from tanneries including Fuga Couros, JBS Couros’ Leather Labs, Treat Couros, and Curtume Mats, Schutz came up with a style that combined a fashionably high heel with the toe-shape of a cowboy boot. Upper materials were generous, but folded down to give a low-cut look, almost like a double-cuff on the sleeve of a dress or a blouse.

Materials that connect

Walter Rodrigues talks of people confronting their fragility and taking comfort from touching “materials that can connect us to our feelings”. What this is about, he says, is using materials (including leather, of course) to make “products that will seduce consumers”. These materials will have to be beautiful as well as sustainable, he insists; they will have to have textures that people will want to come into contact with.

“Now more than ever,” he concludes, “we have to create new parameters for the way we live, and this includes the way we create products and the way we use them to express ourselves. This clearly has major implications for fashion. What is primal, the essence of what we believe in, is an urge to become involved with one another, to create things together, to collaborate. But we are entering a new, circular world and in it the great, primal value will be authenticity.”

Share this story: