After a 12-year hiatus, Brazil’s Rio Fashion Week is back on the fashion calendar. Amid a lineup stacked with some of the country’s heavyweights – Lenny Niemeyer, MISCI and Aluf, to name a few – sits a familiar darling of London Fashion Week. As designer Karoline Vitto staged her debut homecoming show in Rio, she sat down with Wonderland to unpack the experience.

How many times in the past year have you stopped mid-scroll to admire a picture of one of your friends sipping caipirinhas on Copacabana Beach, dressed head-to-toe in green and yellow, framed by the Dois Irmãos mountains? A handful, I bet. It’s undeniable: Brazil has entered its hype era in the international imagination, suddenly shooting to the top of everybody’s travel bucket list. But on home soil, a renaissance of sorts is happening too – at least under fashion’s umbrella. As the world turns its gaze towards Brazil, its culture, visual language and craftsmanship are reaching a global scale, while fashion week returns to Rio de Janeiro for the first time in 12 years, as the well-established older sibling, São Paulo Fashion Week, celebrated its 30th anniversary last October.

Taking over Rio’s historic Pier Mauá, the lineup was an all-encompassing showcase of the country’s industry at its sharpest – with veterans like Osklen, Isabela Capeto and Lenny Niemeyer sharing the bill with the stellar offerings of a new generation of heavyweights, including Dendezeiro, Aluf, MISCI and Lucas Leão. But for London’s creative belly, another rising designer stood out on the schedule. Karoline Vitto – an LVMH Prize semi-finalist, Fashion East alumna and LFW NEWGEN recipient – marked her homecoming moment by presenting her debut show in Brazil at Rio Fashion Week.

Fresh off unveiling her latest collection, aptly titled Sunburn, the Brazil-born, London-based designer sat down with Wonderland to unpack the moment – discussing what it meant to land in Rio with her designs, how Brazil’s rich culture shaped both her upbringing and creative vision, and how she hopes to bridge the Brazilian and British markets as the brand enters its next chapter. Keep reading…

Karoline, congratulations on the show. How does it feel to present in Rio, and what does the city mean to you personally?
Thank you!! It was like coming home. Even though I’m not from Rio, I’m from the South of Brazil, showing in Rio meant returning to motherland and reconnecting with my essence and some of the roots of the brand. Rio is always the place that I visit when I go back to Brazil, even for just a couple of days, to recharge and reconnect with nature, music and people, so showing there felt really personal.

What do you love most about Brazilian fashion, and how have your roots shaped your creative perspective growing up?
I love the swimwear, I think no one does bikinis like Brazil. Companies there invest heavily in the materials and cut, and there are swim brands to suit every personality, body and taste. And I’ve definitely been influenced by that growing up. Every summer, I would buy two sets of bikinis and try to maximize their use by repositioning the straps and wearing them in different ways. In hindsight, this makes sense considering how I design with straps, ruching and toggles. Growing up there also taught me how to appreciate how diverse bodies can be, and how they simply need to exist to enjoy Summer, without rules or constraints.

What was your starting point for this collection?
For this collection, the starting point was our last show, Thaw. Last season our KV girls came back from a frosty winter and melted into Spring, and this time, we continued their storyline by taking them on a journey across the ocean, to arrive in Rio in the heart of Summer. The collection we walked in Rio is called Sunburn, and it tells this journey, the story of the last 5 years of the brand, transitioning from more London, more Urban and darker, to brighter, and warmer and eventually very carioca.

How did this experience compare to showing in London? What cultural contrasts stood out most to you?
There are some key differences in production and roles, and it took me some time to understand the differences, but different ways of working make sense for different countries. The biggest difference is that, in Brazil, the casting director, show choreographer and producer are all one person, called show director. I loved working with our show director, Bill, who was doing several other shows at RIOFW. Stylists and show directors tend to do multiple shows per season in Brazil. Also I must say it felt nice to sacredly pause for lunch every day and have a proper meal (rice and beans, some meat, some salad, some iced tea!) every day instead of a quick bite!

As a fellow Brazilian, I feel incredibly proud of where our fashion industry is right now, it’s been a while since it’s felt this exciting. Do you agree? What have been some standout moments or designers from Rio Fashion Week for you?
I agree! Some of my favourite designers that showed in RIOFW are Lenny Niemeyer, Osklen, Lucas Leao, and Aluf. Lenny’s show in the Museu do Amanha (Museum of Tomorrow) was breathtaking, celebrating the history of her brand, which is, in itself, part of the history of Brazilian fashion.

Were Brazilian designers part of your visual world growing up? Did anyone in particular influence your path into fashion?
Definitely. I remember seeing fashion shows in teen magazines and obsessing over brands like Rosa Cha, Colcci, Lenny, Animale, Cantao. It was the golden age of Brazilian supermodels, and the ads were iconic, and some of that visual language has found its way into what I do today.

Your work so beautifully explores the diversity of bodies and size inclusivity. Brazil is one of the most diverse countries in the world, yet also deeply tied to rigid beauty standards. How do you navigate that paradox? And after casting and showing in Brazil, are you leaving with any new reflections?
Showing there felt very much like my first show in London with Fashion East. There was the expectation and weight of a first. This was the first time a brand showed an almost entirely curve cast in an official fashion week in Brazil, and these firsts always carry a higher level of emotion and responsibility. But this time, the difference is that I have been doing this for 5 years, and in these past 5 years I’ve seen the industry take different turns and changes regarding women and our bodies. Ultimately, I started to believe that we need to talk less about bodies, and just DO more. When people refer to my models as curve/plus-size models, and my brand as a curve/plus-size brand, they put us in a box, a place that will always feel separate and exclude us from a wider fashion conversation. Why not removing the labels? Yes, we have a point of view, but what we show is a fashion narrative, it’s about women and their relationship with clothes. And the models that work with me should be called that: models (great ones, at that), and it should be considered neutral to have more sizing on the runway.

What’s one thing from Brazilian fashion you’d love to bring into London’s landscape and vice versa?
From Brazil, I’d love to normalise wearing flip flops in multiple scenarios in London, and from London, I’d love to take to Brazil really good raincoats, Brazilians like to pretend there is no need for extra coverage under a tropical rainstorm.

This collection leaned heavily into swimwear. Is that a space you’ve explored before? Did your upbringing, or pieces from your own wardrobe, inform this direction?
We always had hints of swim in our previous collections but this was the first time we created swimwear ready to be produced and ready for market. The swimsuits and bikinis were actually inspired by key dresses, skirts and tops from the last 5 years, reinterpreted in new fabrics and trims considering wearability, tan lines, etc.

What was it like designing with a Brazilian customer in mind? Are there any Brazilian icons you’d love to see wearing KV?
It wasn’t too different because our UK customer tends to buy KV for a holiday, or for a special occasion. We started to realise that we live in this space resortwear for some styles and leaned into that, as it converses with both our UK, American and Brazilian customers. I’d love to see actress Paolla Oliveira wearing KV!

What’s next for the brand and what about fashion right now feels most exciting to you?
We are working on keeping the Brazil x London relationship alive and nurtured, structuring the business so we can keep these 2 very different territories translated into the work and resonating with our customers. We love hosting IRL events, so expect to see more pop-ups as well!

Words – Sofia Ferreira