For her Spring/Summer 2027 collection, Sport & Spirit, designer Renata Brenha tackles two foundational pillars of Brazilian culture: the national devotion to futebol and the intimate rituals of domestic faith. Taking conceptual cues from artist Hélio Oiticica’s subversion of Brazilian clichés, Brenha transforms the omnipresent football jersey into an unexpected vessel for artisanal exploration. Guiding this vision is gambiarra, the Brazilian practice of improvisational problem-solving and resourceful repurposing, which dictates how disparate materials can be reassembled into striking new forms.
The entire collection is built without a single yard of newly milled fabric. Instead, Brenha established a material foundation drawn exclusively from post-consumer utilitarian and household salvage. Technical athletic synthetics, sourced in bulk from commercial second-hand sorting warehouses, were washed and organized into micro-runs of blues, greens, and yellows. Lightweight, moisture-wicking polyester knits and striped collar ribbings provide the collection’s activewear base, which Brenha directly juxtaposes with home textiles, including vintage embroidered cotton, linen tablecloths, runners, discarded window curtains, and slatted bamboo blinds that introduce a rigid, tactile counterweight.
Merging activewear synthetics with delicate heirloom textiles required technical persistence. Mass-produced sportswear is transformed across the collection through artisanal handcraft, including traditional smocking, frufru, and custom pleating. When London pleating specialists repeatedly advised Brenha that synthetic polyester jersey knit structures would resist crisp mechanical creasing, she conducted iterative heat-setting and pressure tests to develop her own thermal pleating technique (plissados térmicos). The resulting accordion ribs create sculptural silhouettes such as the Libertadores Pleated Top, which compresses jersey knits while keeping original sportswear logos and branding visible across the pleated ridges.
The collection’s spiritual dimension stems directly from Brenha’s family history, integrating domestic Catholic iconography inherited from her grandmother. Antique holy prayer cards (estampas religiosas) and devotional prints were converted into textile appliqués to embed spiritual imagery onto garments. Shielded beneath translucent overlays of sheer silk and synthetic organza, these sacred images become altarpiece-like wearable reliquaries, set against technical fabrics.
This material dialogue defines the silhouettes throughout the collection. Technical team jerseys are unpicked along their seams and reconfigured through angular color blocking, seen in garments like the Salvador Football Trousers, where mismatched club insignias, sponsor typography, and knit ribbing meet vintage tablecloth borders and denim. Elsewhere, traditional hand-smocking pulls technical fabrics into gathered, form-fitting shapes, pairing hand-smocked floral tops with cycling shorts cut from dismantled jerseys. By treating sports kits and domestic altars as compatible halves of the same cultural fabric, Brenha demonstrates how thoughtful craftsmanship and raw improvisation can redefine modern upcycling.