MARIA BRAZ AND ALL HER VERSIONS
Before understanding that she could work in fashion, Maria Braz already understood the power of an image. Music videos, movies, magazines, red carpets, shows. Britney Spears, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Rihanna. As a child and teenager, she watched, recreated, dressed up, invented characters, and turned her computer into a set for her own productions. Long before there was a strategy behind content, there was already the desire to create.
Fashion entered that imaginary world almost as a natural consequence. The daughter of Silvia Braz, one of the best known personalities in Brazilian fashion and lifestyle, Maria grew up surrounded by references, but found within her own repertoire a way to build her path. Her mother’s wardrobe became a space for experimentation, just like the pop culture that had accompanied her from an early age. Clothes stopped being just clothes and became language, character, and possibility.
At 25, that curiosity gained scale. With more than 600,000 followers on Instagram, Maria has built a presence that moves between the world of major fashion houses and an intimate, spontaneous, and relatable form of communication. Valentino, Miu Miu, Cartier, Carolina Herrera, Wella, and Intimissimi are among the brands she has worked with, while her content continues to leave room for the things that don’t fit into a perfectly produced image.
“I don’t simply want to wear a brand. I want it to be able to enter my universe,” she says. It is precisely in this exchange that one of the most interesting characteristics of her work emerges. Maria doesn’t seem interested in reproducing codes, but rather in absorbing them and giving them back through her own perspective.
There is the Maria who travels to attend fashion week, the one who obsessively researches the history of a fashion house, the one who turns a look into an image, and the one who appears on social media sharing an ordinary conversation with her sister. There is the woman who loves luxury, the pop culture fan, the daughter, the fiancée, the friend, the curious one. And there is also a Maria who chooses not to show everything.
“When your professional life depends so much on documenting everything, keeping something just for yourself becomes a luxury too.”
This multiplicity is the starting point for the exclusive editorial and original fashion film created for GALORE. In front of the cameras, Maria experiments with different codes, characters, and atmospheres in an editorial that reveals some of the many women who coexist within her.
Because perhaps talking about Maria Braz is less about finding a definition and more about following her changing perspectives. She can be in Paris in the morning, immersed in the world of a major fashion house, and a few hours later be back to a conversation with her sister, a Brazilian song, or anything else that sparks her curiosity.
Her repertoire works almost like a private collection. Maria keeps images, songs, places, references, and stories. Some disappear, others resurface months or years later. When they return, they have already passed through her own experience and gained a different meaning.
That is precisely where her different versions meet. There is no single Maria Braz, but rather a series of possibilities that coexist, transform, and reveal a woman who is still interested in experimenting, discovering, and doing everything in her own way.
FEATURE INTERVIEW:
You have always been very close to the fashion world, but when did you realize that fashion could also become your professional path?
I can’t really separate fashion from my childhood because it was always there. But even before fashion, I think there was pop culture. I grew up completely fascinated by music videos, movies, magazines, red carpets, and shows. I watched Britney, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Rihanna, and wanted to recreate everything in my own way. I made videos, dressed up, invented characters, used my computer’s Photo Booth. I was creating content before I even understood that it could be called content.
Fashion eventually became a very natural extension of that universe. I also grew up watching my mother get dressed, having access to her wardrobe, experimenting with things, and, most importantly, reinterpreting them for my age and my world. I think that’s when I began to understand that clothes didn’t have to be just clothes. They could be a way to create an image, tell a story, and experiment with a different version of myself.
Professionally, it happened gradually. Brands started reaching out, the projects became bigger, but the origin is still very much the same: it’s about finding something that fascinates me and thinking, “How would I do this in my own way?”
With thousands of followers and partnerships with major brands, what responsibility do you feel knowing that your choices can inspire a new generation?
I think influence becomes much more interesting when it isn’t a constant attempt to teach someone how to live. I don’t want to occupy that space. I’d rather show what interests me, the people I admire, the conversations that move me, and also allow the people who follow me to draw their own conclusions.
At the same time, there is a real responsibility because I know many younger girls follow me. So I think a lot about what I normalize, what I celebrate, and the space I give to certain subjects.
I love beauty, fashion, luxury, fantasy, and I don’t think there’s anything superficial about that. But my life doesn’t end there. Culture, work, family, friendships, independence, curiosity, and the women around me are also part of who I am. Maybe the responsibility lies precisely in showing that a woman doesn’t need to diminish one part of herself for another to be taken seriously.
After moving through so many markets and cultures, how do you see fashion communication today, and what does Brazil have to add?
I think it’s very interesting that fashion no longer moves in only one direction. There’s still Paris, Milan, London, New York, and all the historical weight of the major fashion houses, but today a reference can emerge from anywhere and reach the entire world within seconds.
And that is very powerful for Brazil because we have always had a very strong visual identity. There is color, sensuality, humor, music, the body, spontaneity, but I also think it’s interesting to expand the idea of what a Brazilian woman can represent internationally. There isn’t just one Brazilian aesthetic.
When I’m abroad, I don’t think about trying to look less Brazilian in order to belong in that environment, nor do I want to perform an obvious version of Brazil. I want to arrive with my own interpretation. I think the conversation becomes interesting precisely when you enter a global universe without erasing what shaped your perspective.
Your content balances the desire associated with luxury with a relatable form of communication. How did you find that balance?
Maybe because I’ve never seen luxury as something that needs to be explained all the time. I like learning about the history of a fashion house, understanding its codes, watching a runway show, researching an old collection, discovering why a certain object exists. But after absorbing all of that, I like to give it back in a way that feels very much like me.
I don’t simply want to wear a brand. I want it to be able to enter my universe.
And I think that’s where the sense of closeness comes from. I can be in Paris for a runway show and, a few hours later, be talking nonsense with my sister or showing something completely ordinary. To me, there isn’t a “luxury” character who comes onstage and then disappears. Everything coexists.
Maybe desire today is precisely about that: not about showing a perfectly distant life, but about making someone look at an image and want to step into that fantasy for a few seconds.
When the cameras turn off and there is no need to create content, who is the Maria that appears?
It’s funny because I think there are many Marias, and this editorial plays exactly with that. There’s the extremely produced Maria, the one who loves fashion, the one who wants to go out, the romantic one, the funny one, the one who wants to be alone, the one who spends hours researching a new obsession.
But when everything turns off, I’m very connected to the people I love. My family, my fiancé, my friends are where I return to. I travel a lot and live a very intense routine, so I’ve started to value even more the moments that don’t need to become anything.
And I really like having things that are just mine. Doing something incredible and not posting it, discovering a place and not telling anyone, spending an entire day without turning it into content. When your professional life depends so much on documenting everything, keeping something just for yourself becomes a luxury too.
Is there a dream you haven’t achieved yet?
Many. And I hope it stays that way.
Professionally, I want to continue entering worlds that I admired even before imagining that I would have access to them. I want to build increasingly deeper relationships with the fashion houses and creators I love, take on bigger fashion, image, and culture projects, and continue putting myself in situations that make me think: how did I end up here?
But there is also an increasingly strong desire to build things that remain beyond my image. Muriaé, where I was born and raised, is very important to me, and I want to continue expanding my work supporting children and teenagers there. Culture, education, sports, and healthcare can completely change a child’s horizon.
I think my dreams today live between these two extremes: continuing to discover the world while never losing the desire to return to where everything began.
If we opened your Spotify and the latest files in your camera roll right now, what would we find?
My Spotify would explain a lot about me. There’s Britney Spears, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Katy Perry, that entire pop generation that practically built my visual imagination. But five songs later, there would probably be Brazilian music, funk, pagode, sertanejo, trap. I’m not very loyal to one genre. I’ll go from L7 and Matuê to Tom Jobim and Elis Regina.
My camera roll might be even more revealing. It’s a chaos of screenshots: old editorials, campaigns, movie frames, looks, hotels, restaurants, places I want to visit, a makeup look from 2004, a chair, a photograph from the ’90s, something completely random that I thought was beautiful.
I collect references almost compulsively. Many of them never become anything, while others resurface months or years later in a project. I think my creativity has always worked this way: I consume images constantly, store everything somewhere, and then give it back transformed through my own world.
TEAM CREDITS:
Editor-in-Chief: Prince Chenoa
Feature Editor: Taylor Winter Wilson (@taylorwinter)
Brazil Editor: Leonardo Loreto (@leonardoloreto)
Writer: Gillian Caetano (@gilliancaetano)
Photography: Guilherme Nabhan (@guilhermenabhan)
Photography Assistants: Jonas Araujo (@jjonasaraujo) , Nicolle Riotto (@nicole_riotto)
Photography Retoucher: Daniel Pohl (@danielopohl)
Creative Direction: Marcelo Jarosz (@marcelojarosz)
Videographer: Scoz (@juniorscoz) , Izac Fedotti (@izacfedotti)
Wardrobe Stylist: Carlos Esser (@carlosesser)
Fashion Production & Assistant Wardrobe Stylist: Rafael Ourives (@rourives)
Makeup Artist: Ivan Barria (@ivanbarriaa)
Assistant Makeup Artist: Ro Resende (@roresende__)
Hair Stylist: Shady Jordan (@shady_jordan)
Movement Direction: Flavio Verne (@flavioverne)
Set Design: Barbara Besouchet (@barbarabesouchet)
Set Design Assistants: Pablo Abreu (@pabluj) , H.E. (@herapnacional)
Art Assistants: Yasmin Sanchez (@yes____yas) , Vinicius Silva (@vini_silva_1993)
Management: Rafael Parada (@rafaelparadaa)
Public Relations: Cintia Naomi (@cinaomik)
