Moda e desenvolvimento local: reconversões culturais na criação e confecção do jeans em Toritama – Pernambuco

Abstract

In Brazil in the 1980’s, due to an economic crisis the shoe trade in Toritama has declined. AS a result, people of the region started to make and trade jeans as a way to survive. Different ways of making garments has occured since then and a process of development was unleashed in the city which is nowadays a member of Arranjo Produtivo Local de Confecções. Thus, the aim of this research is to outline and analyse the cultural reconversion process in the popular fashion creation of Arranjo Produtivo Local de Confecções do Agreste de Pernambuco, particularly the process of change occured between 1980 and 2009 in Toritama, in addition to the possible implications for the local growth. It was also the aim to identify in the local fashion creation and projection the elements transposed from the massive, popular and hegemonic cultures through the ebulition (bubble up) and dripping (trickle down) movements. The research used the qualitative survey to reach the results, thus the main methodological category priorizing the history through semi structured interviews. Those ones showed that in the last 30 years there has been current cycles of hibridization in the popular fashion within the massive interaction and trade, this made changes in the way of acquisition, presentation, and manipulation of cloth, garment accessories, machinery and technology used, all of them were reused as a new techinique creation, production, commercialization of jeans, for instance the inclusion of previous procedure plans which raised a productive globalization and restructured the local development. Most of those reconversions increased, due to governmental and non-governmental support, such as projects, training courses, fashion and business events. If on the one hand the activity of creation and production of fashion developed job and income in Toritama, it was also stablished organizational structure and partnerships. On the other hand it also unleashed a process of environmental threaten.