State of flux
In a world in which nothing stays the same for very long, leather is versatile enough to reflect a huge range of moods, but durable enough to provide beauty and value that last.
In the year 2000, Poznan-born philosopher Zygmunt Bauman coined the phrase ‘Liquid Modernity’. He wanted to express the idea that aspects of people’s lives that had been stable for a long time, including careers and relationships, were, by the start of the new millennium, changing much more frequently. Because things now seemed not to keep their shape for long, Bauman said they were in a liquid rather than a solid state. This change had unfolded over the course of the whole of the twentieth century, accelerating considerably after World War II.
A quarter of a century on, Brazilian fashion designer Walter Rodrigues says change is now occurring even faster, so much so that he suggests ‘Gaseous Modernity’ would be a better description. He says he has spent time recently wondering what this can mean for the luxury sector and for a material he knows well and loves, leather.
Mr Rodrigues has the role of creative consultant for Brazil’s national representative body for footwear and leathergoods components manufacturers, Assintecal. In this capacity, he curates trends presentations at the Inspiramais exhibition, which took place for the thirty-third time in January, with Porto Alegre as the venue. This time, his focus was trends that will be on display in collections for the second half of 2027.
Essential truths
Anyone following the high-end leathergoods sector closely will have noticed that Gucci, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, Dior, Hermès, Loewe, Chanel, Fendi, Balmain, Gaultier and others have something unusual in common: they all made changes to their creative leadership in 2025. Again ‘gaseous’ is the word Walter Rodrigues uses to describe this flow of people and ideas. “I’m not sure how you can win over consumers with this in place,” he says. “We need less noise and more consistency.”
What he refers to as “the first pillar” for his leather trends predictions for the second half of 2027 is ‘Essence’. This, naturally, taps into leather’s inherent ability to last a long time, to be repairable and reusable. It also reminds of us of one of leather’s great superpowers: it is, in essence, a supremely beautiful material and, unlike almost anything else, becomes even more beautiful as time goes by. “Why are some people willing to spend €40,000 on a handbag?” Mr Rodrigues asks. “What is the real value of the bags they buy? What are they really looking for? It has to be something that will remain.”
This makes him remember the late Giorgio Armani, who died in September last year at the age of 91. Walter Rodrigues was a big admirer. “Buying Armani products is like buying jewellery,” he says. “With his minimalism and discreet elegance, he restructured the image of masculinity. His final collection, for spring-summer 2026 was so interesting; it was a confirmation of his brilliance. And the choices he made in his use of leather were impeccable.”
Irish designer Jonathan Anderson was among the movers in 2025, heading from Loewe to Dior. Observing from the other side of the Atlantic, Mr Rodrigues describes him as “very intelligent”. He says Dior hired him “to do something different” because the brand “needs a reaction”. In the first Anderson accessories collection for the brand, for spring-summer 2026, however, Walter Rodrigues sees tributes to famous Dior designers of the past, including John Galliano and Gianfranco Ferré. Most notably, there were echoes of the first post-Christian Dior collection at the company that bears his name. The founder died in 1957. The whole fashion world was intrigued to see what the company would do in 1958, with some wondering if it would even be able to carry on. In the hands of a very young designer named Yves Saint Laurent, the 1958 collection ended up as a major triumph. Jonathan Anderson is tapping into the essence of Dior, and Walter Rodrigues approves.
Suede parade
He has called the second main theme for his latest trends forecast ‘Purism’. When he thinks about purism, what comes into his mind, the Brazilian designer says, is “leather, leather, leather”. Evidence of it in the recent collections at Ferragamo, Balenciaga, Balmain, Tom Ford and, again, Dior, makes him confident this will come into the collections tanners, finished product manufacturers and brands offer for the second half of 2027.
Purism came across in high-shine and patent finishes, he says, for example in “techy but also sexy” products at Tom Ford, while some of the pieces to have come recently from Hermès had “a shininess that looked innate”. However, Mr Rodrigues also believes there was a purism about many of the soft suedes that have been popular in recent haute-couture collections. He expects these materials and looks to be prevalent in forthcoming mainstream collections too as part of fashion’s democratic flow, which we describe in more detail below.
Craft at scale
His expectation is that this will apply also to deliberately decorative looks, the basis of his third theme, which he calls ‘Adorned’. “This has been a huge force in the big maisons’ latest collections,” he says. At Dries Van Noten, this often manifested itself in embroidered details and the same phenomenon caught Walter Rodrigues’ eye in the early work at Chanel of another Belgian designer, Mathieu Blazy.
At Balmain, Olivier Rousteing stitched seashells and nutshells onto garments as adornments. Mr Rodrigues says he found this “provocative and interesting”, adding that similar decorative elements appeared in the first pieces that Jack McCollough and Lázaro Hernández created at Loewe.
When it comes to leather, the Inspiramais creative consultant says ‘Adornment’ is most in evidence in metallic finishes, including at Michael Kors. For the second half of 2027, he believes Brazilian tanners, in particular, will demonstrate this effectively. He predicts that copper finishes, as well as silver and gold, will be a popular choice.
Leathers that look flashy and decorative have an important role to play in the domestic market, according to Mr Rodrigues. “Brazilian people love brightness,” he explains. “We are, usually, a colourful and joyful people and we like to express that in the way we dress.”
He recently led a project called ‘Local Iconography’, working with craftspeople who live and work in the district of Santarém in the northern state of Pará, in places such as Alter do Chão, on the Tapajós river, around 1,200 kilometres west of Belém. Artisans there use all kinds of materials from their local environment. The project left the designer with the clear impression that exotic and colourful fish leathers, a specialism of Brazilian tanners such as Nova Kaeru, are an inherently decorative material. “Fish leathers are supremely noble materials,” he comments. The scales that lift and move on the surface of the skins produce a similar decorative effect to the sewn-on add-ons that big-name fashion houses have found so appealing.
River riches
He explains that river fish are an important source of food for many communities in Amazon regions and that, until recently, the skins would simply go to waste. The large size of many of the fish make the skins interesting to work with, with options for using the finished fish leather in bags, garments and a whole range of footwear, partly because some specialist tanners have become skilled in adjusting the thickness of the finished leather.
“I like it very much,” the designer says. “It looks like exotic leather from a reptile skin, but it’s from a fish.” Brazilian tanners do produce exotic leather from materials such as crocodile skins. Some of those skins, smaller in size, are sourced domestically. Larger ones are imported from Australia. They are carefully controlled, with certification and transparency all along the supply chain, he insists. He uses reptile skins in some of the products he designs, but he says he knows that if he wants to use crocodile or snake in a bag, a garment or a pair of shoes, all the certification must be in place. This is the only way the system can work, he explains, adding that the fiscal authorities would come down hard on any operator who refused to follow the rules.
Mr Rodrigues continues: “Fish leather is also an interesting alternative material. We have so much bovine leather in Brazil. This is a good thing because the cattle population is large [almost 240 million head in 2025] and we eat a lot of beef. If we were unable to turn the hides into leather, we would face a serious pollution problem. In fact, on a smaller scale, this is exactly what was happening in some river communities with fish skins. Today, I am pleased to say, more communities are finding ways to put this material to good use. It is a sustainable system and it is helping to improve the lives of people in those communities.”
At Inspiramais, footwear group Arezzo worked with participating tanneries, including Arte da Pele, Mucca Pelli and CR Leather, to put some of these decorative leathers into an eye-catching collection of ankle boots. Applying delicate, artistic hand-finished colouring to fish leather, the overall look was fresh and floral, with the scales on the skin playing the part of petals.
Popular choices
Last year, São Paulo’s Museum of Brazilian Art, presented a Pop-Art retrospective called ‘Andy Warhol: Pop Art!’ Walter Rodrigues loved it. But he says he knows he wasn’t the only one. The exhibition opened on May 1, with an original closing date of June 30. This was extended to August 31 owing to popular acclaim.
At the same time, he points out, there were clear signs of Pop Art in fashion collections, such as Versace’s for spring-summer 2026. The collection that creative director, Dario Vitale, put together for the brand included elegant leather pumps with representations reminiscent of Warhol’s portraits of Marilyn Monroe in pop colours printed onto the vamp. Pop Art, then, is the fourth main theme in the Walter Rodrigues leather trends predictions for the season in focus.
Colour and brightness will do the world a world of good, he suggests. Mr Rodrigues’s design studio is in São Paulo, but his home state is Rio Grande do Sul. He says the fatal floods there in the winter of 2024 were a catastrophe that resulted in widespread despair. “It was a great sadness,” he says. “It felt like we were close to the end of the world.” He believes fashion is democratic and is for everyone and can play an important role in helping people recover from events like this. Almost like an economist, he has developed his own model for how this works, a trickle-down theory for fashion.
It involves “a pyramid methodology”, in which he calculates that only 10% of the products in the market are by designers or companies that are making their own decisions about the products they will make and how they will make them. Most new ideas or, as we have seen, sensitive rework (at the right time and in the right place) of old ideas, comes from this section of the pyramid. But the 10% is important, which is why Mr Rodrigues believes in keeping a close eye on what happens at the major European fashion houses.
Some of their ideas will be picked up and incorporated into more widely manufactured products that will appeal to 30% of the market. And some of those ideas will go beyond that and become easy and affordable enough to produce for brands to adapt further and make available to the remaining 60% of consumers.
Almost everyone can take part in this and, he insists, benefit from doing so. “People have to be able to look forward again and think about tomorrow, about their own futures and about the world they will pass on to their grandchildren,” he says.
Bright colours in fashion can help restore hope, he believes, and are also in keeping with Brazil’s national character. “Brightness makes me think of dance,” he says. “It symbolises the way people connect to one another and help one another. Dance is very important to us in Brazil. We are a very musical people. We have lots of rhythm.”
Brightness is part of Brazil’s natural character, Walter Rodrigues says.
Credit: Inspiramais
