Estúdio Traça imagines fashion’s future from denim that already exists

Estúdio Traça presented ‘Zanzalá’ at Casa de Cultura Oswald de Andrade in São Paulo. All 25 looks were developed from garments held in Levi's archive and deadstock, continuing a partnership between the denim company and Gui Amorim's upcycling label.

Cubatão, Amorim's home city, provides the collection's industrial and ecological tension. Once associated with severe pollution, the city has also undergone a long environmental recovery; the clothes turn that contrast into reconstructed volumes, exposed seams and denim surfaces that appear to carry their earlier lives.

The title comes from Afonso Schmidt's 1928 novel ‘Zanzalá’, an early work of Brazilian science fiction that imagined society a century into the future. Amorim uses that premise to ask a practical fashion question: what if the material needed for the future is already in circulation?

Rather than treating reuse as an aesthetic effect, the collection makes existing stock the design brief. Its value lies in demonstrating that an archive can function as raw material at collection scale, not simply as a source of references.