Free Essays on Brazilian Women In The Fashion Industry

In the late twentieth century women’s roles in the Brazilian fashion industry boomed. Many women have worked in the slums of Brazil and sewed clothes for some of the top designers and models. There are also women that work on the business side of the industry. These women own their own businesses, manage, import foreign goods, market, and sell the finished products. Together seamstresses and entrepreneurs in Brazil have made a name in the world of fashion. Starting in the 1980s seamstresses no longer had to work in the horrible conditions and for the low pay of the sweatshops. In 1981 Maria Theresa Leal opened a cooperative called the Cooparoca in Rocinha, a major slum in Brazil, after seeing how the women there had an interest in fashion (Downie). In the beginning textile companies donated extra cloth and materials to the Cooparoca at the request of Leal and the women began to work. They started out by making covers, cushions, and pompoms and selling them to family and friends. In 1987, the cooperative was registered and received grants from the United Nations Development Program and a government credit line (Downie). Leal provide sewing classes so that other women could begin a career of their own. Leal was now able to buy a nice place for the women to work in, which was very uncommon in these slums. The women work in a very unique environment in a spacious three-story building. Leal made sure the women were comfortable and treated with respect. She wanted the women to be happy at what they were doing. In 1994, Cooparoca’s designs were shown off at a Rio fashion show for the first time (Downie). The women really didn’t know what they were doing and all of the clothes were messed up. At the time deconstructionist designs were popular. The critics loved the Cooparoca’s designs because they thought they were trying to be deconstructionists. The editors of Vogue and Elle magazine were at Leal’s home the ne... Free Essays on Brazilian Women In The Fashion Industry Free Essays on Brazilian Women In The Fashion Industry In the late twentieth century women’s roles in the Brazilian fashion industry boomed. Many women have worked in the slums of Brazil and sewed clothes for some of the top designers and models. There are also women that work on the business side of the industry. These women own their own businesses, manage, import foreign goods, market, and sell the finished products. Together seamstresses and entrepreneurs in Brazil have made a name in the world of fashion. Starting in the 1980s seamstresses no longer had to work in the horrible conditions and for the low pay of the sweatshops. In 1981 Maria Theresa Leal opened a cooperative called the Cooparoca in Rocinha, a major slum in Brazil, after seeing how the women there had an interest in fashion (Downie). In the beginning textile companies donated extra cloth and materials to the Cooparoca at the request of Leal and the women began to work. They started out by making covers, cushions, and pompoms and selling them to family and friends. In 1987, the cooperative was registered and received grants from the United Nations Development Program and a government credit line (Downie). Leal provide sewing classes so that other women could begin a career of their own. Leal was now able to buy a nice place for the women to work in, which was very uncommon in these slums. The women work in a very unique environment in a spacious three-story building. Leal made sure the women were comfortable and treated with respect. She wanted the women to be happy at what they were doing. In 1994, Cooparoca’s designs were shown off at a Rio fashion show for the first time (Downie). The women really didn’t know what they were doing and all of the clothes were messed up. At the time deconstructionist designs were popular. The critics loved the Cooparoca’s designs because they thought they were trying to be deconstructionists. The editors of Vogue and Elle magazine were at Leal’s home the ne...

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Future Updates Future Updates We created this blog so that many of you could get an on-the-ground view of how development of is going. Over the summer, we listened to your feedback and kept track of all the bugs/feature requests that were reported. Last month, we got the go ahead from our Information Systems(IS) Professors/Advisors to continue developing for Fall 2007. We were astounded by the number of users that began using , and by the sheer amount of feedback we received from the community; 117 requests to be exact! Many of you mentioned that you would like the ability to edit bibliographies. This is a feature we’ve been meaning to add since day 1, so look for that to be implemented in the next few weeks. Also, look for Harvard Citation support to be implemented within a month. Alot of you have been asking for the ability to share and tag your bibliographies. In the next month, we’ll be working on the User Interface(UI) and putting in the functionality for that. Even more of you have been asking for database support, and to expand our selection of books, magazines, films, academic journals, and our â€Å"other sources†. Rest assured we are working towards these things in the next 3 months. Some of you have wondered why we haven’t considered a lot of proprietary databases; JSTOR, IMDB, etc. We’d love to support many of these items, but they would incur ridonculous licensing fees that we are unable to absorb in our current state. As always, we depend on you to let us know if you run into any bugs, or if you think a certain feature would be a great addition to . Please feel free to contact us. Cheers! Alvin Fong