São Paulo – With a sustainable business proposition and a name inspired by a Lebanese matriarch, the Brazilian biojewelry and sculpture brand Chames Bio is looking to shoot past the boundaries of the domestic market. This Rio de Janeiro-based studio crafts luxury items sold at auteur stores across Brazil, and it has two overseas expansion targets in mind: the Arab countries and Europe.
“Chames’ markets are Europe and the Arab countries. These markets place great value on manual, artisanal, exclusive work. Having limited amounts of product is important in those markets. Those are timeless markets. I believe that they ascribe a rather different value to what they wear,” Chames Bio creative director, designer, and owner Chames Bio Neida Freitas told ANBA.
Chames Bio creates women’s accessories and decorative sculptures using Brazilian silk thread and cocoons. Instead of turning into industrial waste, the silk is routed into the studio. The necklaces, earrings, and bracelets also include materials such as Murano glass, certified or waste wood, Brazilian metals, and natural stones. Neida carefully sources every input with an eye toward sustainability and socially conscious production.
The silk comes from O Casulo Feliz (Portuguese for The Happy Cocoon), a sustainability-driven company in Vale da Seda, Paraná that employs solar power, plant dyes, locally sourced materials, effluent treatment, etc. the Murano glass includes the substance from the eponymous Italian island, but the actual product delivered to Neida is created in small workshops in Brazil.
Across the border
Neida has succeeded in positioning her product in the luxury segment, and then she sought out luxury retail outlets across Brazil. In addition to selling on social media and the brand’s own website, the accessories and sculptures are available from exclusive points of sale in Southeast Brazil, such as galleries.
Chames Bio does not export product yet, but talks are ongoing for sales at a museum in France. Neida underwent industry training at the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service (Sebrae), and after taking a close look at the United States market, she concluded that that wasn’t the best fit for her company. Last year, Chames Bio became an Arab-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce member company in a bid to explore the Arab market.
The Lebanese matriarch
Chames Bio is a business infused with values and history, at Neida’s behest. The name Chames, which is Arabic for “Sun,” comes from Chames Aboud Damous, the fourth great-grandmother to Neida’s daughter and great-grandmother to her ex-husband, Jorge Eduardo Aboud. Chames was born in Zahle, and she studied and worked at her father’s shop. After marrying and having children, she led her family’s move to Brazil, an effort mostly left to men in those days. She peddled and sold and eventually established the embryo of what would become the biggest conglomerate in the state of Maranhão during the 1950s and early 1960s.
Just like Chames, Neida started her business during a turnaround in her life. After earning a degree in Administration with a major in Environmental Management in the state of Pará, where she spent most of her life, she worked in the then-brand-new field she’d majored in. Neida represented her university in projects at local and riverside communities. In one such project, she met her ex-husband and decided to relocate to Rio with him in 2007.
A while later, fresh out of a job with a Brazilian utility company, she brought her mother from Pará to Rio for medical treatment and found a pastime in biojewelry-making. At that point, the only work she’d been doing was the occasional certification job. Neida helped a friend assemble costume jewelry, and then started taking steps towards building her own brand.
Neida descends from indigenous people, for whom having women in leading roles is a tradition. She did research into silk production in Brazil, and once she’d set her sights on her raw material, she set about bringing Chames Bio into being. The first-ever collection was launched in January 2021, amid the pandemic. “My vibe then was all about re-signifying my life, re-signifying things, our work, our family life,” she says. The second collection came out in July.
Silk Road and Lebanon Sun
Sculptures made their way into the business after Neida got invited to exhibit at the Brazilian décor show Abimad. That prompted her to create a collection based on the Silk Road, featuring items evoking places and experiences associated with the ancient trade route, like the Mediterranean Sea, the Arab Empire, the spices, fabrics, and languages that used to journey along its paths. “I realized that this was a chance to grow into other possibilities,” she says regarding the sculptures.
The flagship Chames Bio piece is the “Lebanon Sun” necklace, from 2020. Neida creates all of the brand’s items, including the necklace, which she makes a point of wearing whenever she’s introducing her business to someone. “It’s an homage to Chames,” Neida says of the necklace, which has been recognized as a work of art by the School of Fine Arts of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Contact:
Chames Bio
Whatsapp +55 21 99797-9113
Website here – Instagram here
Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
