Street art inspires new brands and becomes a business for artists on the outskirts of São Paulo

Artists and entrepreneurs from neighborhoods at the extremes of São Paulo have used peripheral art to create independent brands and diversify fashion.

A resident of Grajaú, Felipe Carvalho, 34, started VOS (Viva o Skate), in clothing, with a Facebook page.

“The crowd started liking and asking how they could buy one [camiseta]🇧🇷 We decided to make a larger shipment to sell”, he says. The brand has become a virtual store, with pieces ranging from R$ 70 to R$ 190.

He resigned from the advertising agency where he worked and, today, the business is his main income. Carvalho estimates to earn up to R$5,000 per month.

Urban art is the inspiration of artist Dino, 46, from Osasco (Greater São Paulo). “I only collaborate [parceria] with street artists, my clothes are sold to the periphery, at an affordable price. Through this I can connect the brands and get inspired to do my run”, she says.

In 2018, he partnered his brand, Éh Humano, with King, one of the main streetwear stores in Brazil.

The event had artists from Grajaú, Capão Redondo, both in the south zone of São Paulo, and from ABC. “I did it to be able to connect the outskirts and create a collection of clothes that represented pixação and urban art. And that way I manage to make a profit with my brand today”, he says.

Dino criticizes the appropriation of urban art elements by the fashion mainstream. “People who didn’t come from the streets used pixação to gain visibility, to do commercial work. I understood that I should be in this place first”, he says.

It is also from pixo that comes the work of the brand Criptografia Urbana, created by the artist and activist Djan Ivson, 38, known as Cripta Djan. A resident of Osasco for 20 years, he joined the “Crypt” group at the age of 13, of which he is still a member today.

Known as one of the first to publicly discuss pixo in the media, he launched the project during the Covid-19 pandemic. The idea is to be able to take an affordable amount of art to the peripheries, such as paintings, murals and clothes.

“The brand was an old project to work with great varieties of art, putting pixo in the place of simple and sophisticated, which in fact it already has”, he defends.

The brands, which rely on the service of local seamstresses, usually sell from 10 to 50 pieces per month. The target audience is mostly men between 18 and 40 years old.

Also from Grajaú, Geovane Lucena, 28, created the brand Safita, in reference to the slang “this tape”. He says he started printing T-shirts in 2012, which he took to sell at break dance events.

“I still don’t survive on my brand alone, it gives me a return to support itself, but I work in a company and every day I try to go to work in Safita, clothes say a lot about you, and I wear my brand”, he says. “Without any training, just the will to make art and sell clothes”, she says.