One of the more anticipated shows of the Paris fall '03 collections was that of Brazilian Alexandre Herchcovitch, who—even by his country's exotic standards—is a strange bird. His skewed sense of pageantry and love of the macabre, along with his signature jumbling of references, colors and patterns, have propelled him to the front of Brazil's diverse fashion menagerie.

Born and raised in sprawling São Paulo, the world's third largest city, the 31-year-old Herchcovitch exhibits all the idiosyncrasies one would expect from an artist of the cloth. He collects fake skulls (over 200 and counting), sports a tattoo on his left hand in the shape of notebook paper to jot down reminders and entertains a preoccupation with women's shoes and bags rivaling Imelda Marcos. Herchcovitch is nothing short of São Paulo's premier provocateur.

"I like to shock," says Herchcovitch, as he wrestles a Dusty Springfield-style bouffant wig onto his head. With a three-quarter turn, he examines his handiwork in the bathroom mirror of his room at Unique, a concrete-clad haute hotel in São Paulo's exclusive Jardins neighborhood. Satisfied that his wig is securely attached, he gently bobs his head to test the bounce of his instant coiffure. "There's a brilliant new generation of Brazilian designers coming up, but I worry that many of them don't take enough risks," he says. "Many of them don't seem to understand the value of self-exploration."

Others in the room sound off approvingly, including Pat Field—a long-time supporter of Herchcovitch who's carried the line in her New York shop since 1996—her assistant, Carolina Gannon, club performer Johnny Luxo, Herchcovitch's artistic director, Mauricio Ianes, and a model called Isabella. All of us are getting ready for the Wig Party, the unofficial finale to Fashion Week started a year ago by Herchcovitch and fellow São Paulo designer Marcelo Sommer.

Throughout our primping process, Herchcovitch elaborates on the emerging fashion scene in Brazil. "Fashion here is just starting to become part of the culture. It's still quite new," he says through pursed lips as he touches up his peach-pink lipstick. "So we don't have established traditions yet, like the Italian tradition of tailoring. Fashion colleges and fashion journalism are just springing up. We have many fashion editors now but, in the past, we had only 3 or 4, who now must be at least 60 years old. Magazines still copy a lot of what they see in the foreign press, but it happened a lot more 20 years ago. We are all moving ahead together. I think in 5 to 10 years, Brazilian fashion will be very big."

To Brazilians, Herchcovitch is already a larger-than-life national treasure, a status he cemented recently with an appearance as himself on a nationally-syndicated soap opera, which have become so popular in Brazil that season cliffhangers bring the country to a fingernail-chewing halt. Herchcovitch has also been invited to design the uniforms for the 2004 Brazilian Olympic team. And, two years ago in Paris, Isabella Blow appeared in one of his suits at the opening night party of "Les Annees Pop" (The Pop Years), a Tom Ford-sponsored exhibition at the Pompidou Center.

In a taxi now, en route to the Wig Party, I ask Herchcovitch which designer he most looks up to. "Rei Kawakubo," he answers, without hesitation. "She has no limits in her work for Comme des Garçons. She gives herself absolute freedom to experiment with shapes and silhouettes, which allows her to remain original."

As likely to be inspired by cartoons as Christian Dior's New Look, Herchcovitch has also built a reputation for originality among the Brazilian fashion elite. "I achieve my originality through contrast," he says, "I always challenge myself to work with colors or cuts I don't like. And I'll mix up different cultures to create something entirely new." He'll combine, for instance, Japanese and Spanish styles to create kimono dresses with long Flamenco tails. And once, in a statement on the natural versus the artificial, he showed dresses embossed with large flowers molded from hi-tech temperature-sensitive material that glowed an eerie phosphorescent pink as the models moved past heat-radiating lights on the runway.

But it was Herchcovitch's 1993 insanity-inspired graduation show at São Paulo's Faculde de Moda Santa Marcelina that provides the best example of his harmony-through-conflict methodology. In a coup de théâtre, his models carried crucifixes and skulked up and down a runway in the shape of an inverted cross, bound by straightjackets dripping with red ink to resemble blood. This, in a university run by nuns.

His fall '03 collection, the same collection that will be shown in Paris, was also a study in contrasts. While his muse, Jeannine, belted out 50's songs of unrequited love, Herchcovitch's models strode onto the runway dressed up to resemble "good" and "bad" girls of the era. Some wore sweet pastel pedal-pushers, cropped jackets with rounded rose-petal collars and Sandra Dee bangs, while others had on less virginal black-sequined skirts, denim jackets and low, strapless dresses adorned with haphazard fringe made from mangled bits of candy-colored plaid. Rizzo would have been proud. And then there were models who wore elements of both, highlighting the universal concept of good versus evil, further illustrated by t-shirts with printed Disney images of Snow White, Bambi and Pinocchio.

Although his designs are unorthodox, Herchcovitch was brought up in a traditional Jewish family. The son of a Brazilian lingerie manufacturer from whom he learned his technical wizardry, he began toying around with fabric at an early age. "I was a little boy when I started to pay attention to fashion," he says, wiping lipstick off his teeth. "My mother used to make her own clothes at home, so I asked her to teach me how to sew and cut. Up until a few years ago, it was just me doing the cutting for all the orders that came in. So I know all about the construction of clothing."

By the age of 16, in the mid-80s, Herchcovitch had discovered São Paulo's rich underground culture and embraced it with open, heavily bangled, arms. "São Paulo's alternative scene was a huge influence," he recalls. "I started by designing clothes for the transvestites and club performers I met, like Márcia Pantera and Johnny Luxo. I would measure them and make their stage clothes. I loved making clothes for all these fascinating people. They were my first models and the clubs were my first catwalks."

Since then, Herchcovitch's line has grown into a massive, multifaceted brand that includes not only a women's line, but also a men's line (he estimates men make up 40 percent of his clientele), a jeans line, a men's underwear line, a lingerie line and a line of jewelry with prices exceeding $16,000. As if his schedule permits anything else, he's also been tapped as the Creative Director of Cori, Brazil's oldest label, and charged with updating its granny image. So far, he's hired a new staff and brought Cori into the Fashion Week schedule.

When he's not contributing to his country's burgeoning fashion industry, Herchcovitch acts as a mentor to a hand-picked pool of new design talent in a year-old project called Hotspots. "The other mentors and I chose nine designers to sponsor for six seasons, or three years, bringing them up all the way. But I don't interfere in their creative process. So I always tell them don't copy, do something using their personalities, their own tastes. I tell them they have to see everything, but ultimately they have to be original."

As we arrive at Ultralounge to throngs of bewigged patrons, I ask Herchcovitch about his future plans and whether he'd ever leave Brazil for good. "I plan to open more stores in Brazil and continue showing in Paris, of course. I have been thinking lately about working outside of Brazil, like living here six months and somewhere else six months, maybe New York or Paris. I love New York." What's the first thing he does there? "I always stop in at the Halloween costume shop on Third Avenue. It's my favorite place to go in New York."

In the make-up melting heat of the club, Herchcovitch is an image of powdered perfection. He's greeted by hordes of friends and admirers, but he turns to me quickly, before stepping up to the DJ booth, and finishes, "Come to think of it, I don't really want to leave Brazil. The whole world is in São Paulo—Japanese, Italian, African, Jewish, Catholic—it's all so inspiring. It lets me be as free as I want to be."

Unless otherwise noted, all images are from "Alexandre Herchcovitch", a book published by Cosac & Naify, São Paulo, 2002.