Ten Issues of Made in Brazil

When Juliano Corbetta started the website Made in Brazil in 2005, he could never have imagined that he would find himself, a little over a decade later, celebrating the tenth issue of a print publication of the same name. “I started the blog as just a personal project and then it became something else,” he recalls. “To this day, I still find it fascinating how everything picked up, but I think it’s the things that start as a real interest that resonate with people.”

Focused on Brazil’s vibrant culture, fashion, energy, and—most notably—male models, Made in Brazil (the website) gained a passionate global following that Corbetta, a former swimwear designer and native of Brazil, credits to his own perspective of looking at his home country anew after spending many years living elsewhere. “It was just a way for me to reconnect with Brazil because I had been living abroad,” he explains, “so it was all things that I found interesting in Brazil from an international perspective. Sometimes when we’re here, we see things with the eyes of someone who’s used to seeing those things on a daily basis, so to me those things all of a sudden seemed more interesting because I had been away from it for so long.”

Corbetta says that there was never actually a conscious intention to spin off the website into a print magazine, which launched its inaugural issue in 2010. The development was, instead, an organic evolution, establishing the personal tone the magazine continues to embody today. Corbetta had been collaborating with the photographer Cristiano Madureira shooting dozens of models at a time when Brazil’s print market was still limited, and they decided they wanted to create a fanzine to give the guys an outlet on par with what female models had available to them. “When we set out to do it, it was never intentionally supposed to be an offspring of the blog, it was just a fanzine, and when we finished it we had shot the 25 most important guys from Brazil at the time in one single book,” he says. “I just couldn’t think of another name, so I named it Made in Brazil as well, but to me it always felt like a different project.”

Over ten issues, Made in Brazil Magazine has expanded its scope beyond the eponymous country’s borders, but Corbetta decided that the anniversary called for a return to its roots, hence the latest issue’s theme of Rio de Janeiro, which conveniently also has an elevated profile as it prepares to host the Olympics this summer. Four covers, starring actors Cauã Reymond and Marco Pigossi, musician Lucas Lucco, and model Iann Pastor, have also helped move the issue outside its usual focus on models. Albert Watson and Paul Sinclaire contribute a feature on Francisco Lachowski and his family and friends, while Philippe Vogelenzang and Way Perry capture an international batch of rising faces from Julian Schneyder and Alessio Pozzi to Kit Butler and Filip Hrivnak. Madureira’s portfolio of five Brazilian Olympic hopefuls also marks Corbetta’s first time working with athletes, whose timetables in the lead up to this summer’s competitions have been “worse than the schedule of an actor.” He laughs, “I think for the magazine I will stick with models for the next one.”

The issue’s centerpiece, however, is a 100-page feature shot by Madureira around Rio with styling by David Vandewal and accompanying illustrations by Richard Haines. The team shot over the course of a week, bringing in six trunks’ worth of clothing to elevate the depiction of the city beyond the usual swimwear. “Nowadays, people don’t really get to build a story over the course of a week and that felt really special to me to be able to experiment a bit. I felt it was one of the most challenging things I could do,” he laughs, “and that’s why I wanted to do it.”

With ten issues completed, Corbetta explains that he has the sense that he has finished a full cycle and is ready to turn his eyes in a new direction for the next one. “Print magazines nowadays, they should be something special and they should make you dream,” he explains. “I would love to be able to do something different every time. I don’t want it to be like a regular magazine that comes out once or twice a year. I want it to be a different project every time so that people feel excited about it and I feel excited about doing it. Anything that feels like I won’t be able to achieve it and seems like a crazy idea is what I want to do next.”

Take an exclusive first look at the four covers above and the issue’s features below.

Left: Artist – Richard Haines at Jed Root (New York) | Right: Iann Pastor at 40 Graus Models | Photographer – Cristiano Madureira | Stylist – David Vandewal (Art + Commerce)