Brazilian apparel brand Farm Rio is partnering with the country’s Yawanawá community for a capsule collection that pays homage to the Yawanawá’s connection to nature and vibrant culture.
The Yawanawá are an indigenous people who live in Acre, Brazil; Madre de Dios, Peru, and Pando, Bolivia. The Yawanawá consist of 1,300 people stewarding their homeland of 500,000 acres of tropical forest, 95 percent of which is intact. The Yawanawá community and their allies are developing a model of sustainability that allows the Yawanawá to protect the rainforest and engage with the outside world on their own terms without losing their cultural and spiritual identity.
The capsule collection includes beaded jewelry crafted by Yawanawá women, as well as three exclusive prints Farm Rio’s team crafted after talking with the Yawanawá women about their experiences in nature.
In the collection, Farm Rio will introduce 13 new styles, three exclusive prints and two beaded accessories meant to narrate the stories of the Yawanawá people. Each print, color and detail results from collaborative efforts, weaving a delicate fabric that resonates with the sacred plants, animals and communal spaces within the Yawanawá culture. The collection consists of 11 clothing pieces (three dresses, one skirt, three blouses, one short, one pant, one silk jumpsuit and one silk shirt) and one bracelet and one necklace.
“Meeting these female leaders, artists and guardians of the forest has forever transformed our relationship with nature and our feminine essence. Moved by this intention of mutual care, more and more, we connect with those who speak for their land as a place of healing, respect and love,” said Katia Barros, cofounder and creative director of Farm Rio. “The Yawanawá word ‘rauti’ meaning ‘ornaments of beauty and protection’ says it all. It is a privilege for us to share their strength and sensitivity with the world, offering clothes and jewelry that embody what we feel as the heart of the Amazon,” said Barros.
The beaded jewelry pieces are meant to symbolize the future for the Yawanawá community. The Farm Rio initiative has empowered 180 women with direct income, and the brand has invested in local infrastructure. The collaboration supports festivals and reforestation projects and provides access to the internet for women’s health programs.
A dress from the Yawanawá partnership.
Rapha_Lucena, courtesy of Farm Rio
Prices range from $75 to $315.
Prints for the collection were crafted through video conversations between the Yawanawá women and Farm Rio’s design, marketing and partnership team members. Drawing inspiration from discussions about the Yawanawá culture and life experiences in the forest, Farm Rio’s teams created the designs. During collaborative meetings, the Yawanawá added their touch, providing correction, validation and names to each print.
Some of the jewelry developed by the Yawanawá community.
Raphael Lucena, courtesy of Farm Rio.
“The Yawanawá people and Farm partnership has become a successful collaboration model between an indigenous community and a Brazilian private company. We have worked in cooperation, setting an example that is possible for indigenous communities to engage in business with true partners who share the same life mission as us — to preserve our forests and ancestral knowledge for the well-being of our people, Brazil and humanity as a whole,” said Laura Yawanawá, who together with her husband Chief Tashka Yawanawá, leads the Yawanawá people in Acre, Brazil.
The capsule will launch Tuesday on farmrio.com, farmrio.eu as well as in the company’s U.S. and London stores.
Farm Rio, which was founded in 1997, has three U.S. boutiques in New York, Miami and Venice, Calif., one in London, and more than 2,000 global retailers and branded spaces in Samaritaine, Le Bon Marchá, Liberty, Rinascente, Bloomingdale’s and Printemps. Farm Rio is a Certified B corp., and is part of Brazil’s largest fashion retail group, Grupo Soma. From every purchase (online, in-store and through authorized retailers), Farm Rio donates one tree to be planted in Brazil.
