BlackBook Magazine

Jeffrey Jah holds forth on going from runways to club king, bringing heat from here to Sao Paulo, and putting DEA raids behind him.

Point of Origin: I'm originally from Toronto, but now I live in Gramercy Park. After my modeling days, I was an event producer and creative director for venues. I started out having connections in the fashion industry, from photographers to make-up artists, editors, and designers. I started producing events, which eventually turned into parties, promoting clubs, directing clubs, and finally owning clubs, bars, and restaurants. I currently own the Inn/Canoe Club in New York, I'm a partner in 1Oak, a partner in Café de La Musique in Florianopolis, Brazil. I also have six Lotus clubs in Brazil, Double Seven reopening in New York, and a Double Seven opening in LA in 2009.

Diesel XXX -- not be confused with that unfortunate chrome-domed actor and his unfortunate secret agent movie -- is segueing from industrial clothing brand to international party starter, with a 24-hour global shindig on October 11. The intercontinental soiree will begin in Tokyo and successively stumble to Beijing, Dubai, Athens, Amsterdam, Milan, Zurich, Munich, Paris, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Oslo, Helsinki, London, and Sao Paulo. No New York unfortunately, except for the 5,000-person grand finale we've been granted along Brooklyn's scenic waterfront, hosted by that Mistress of Seduction, Joey Arias, and featuring performances from M.I.A., N.E.R.D, and Hot Chip.

Brazilian furniture designer Fernando Akasaka has a sixth sense when it comes to creating works of functional art. A polished brass side table looks like a big gold chunk extracted from a subterranean kingdom. A magazine holder enlists spiky shapes -- they could be stalagmites or chopsticks -- into the paradoxically friendly task of holding current monthlies. Sculptural, smooth and seductive, Sao Paulo-based designer Fernando Akasaka’s multifaceted furnishings for his line FA Designs are a magpie’s delight, glittering works of art that tap into a primitive human attraction to the shiny-metallic.

The Sao Paulo Fashion Week experience wrapped up Sunday night with Brazil's most famous fashion export, Ms. Tom Brady, gracing the Colcci runway, a flamboyant and highly anticipated return home for the locally grown superstar. By that time, we were on a plane flying over this city of endless skyscrapers, fascinating, heterogeneous, and engaging people, and nonstop, electric energy, exhausted from the constant shows and parties that had decimated the normally resilient BlackBook squad covering the seven-day affair. Check out the photo gallery, then see our recaps from Day 1 and Days 2-3, with yet more photo galleries.) Even local scenesters and fashion folks we talked to confessed they were looking forward to a good night's sleep and sustenance that didn't come in a champagne flute. With the merry decadence behind us, we're heading back to New York to recover, and looking forward to our next trip back, when BlackBook returns to debut the BlackBook Guide for Sao Paulo later this year. Stay tuned.

In other words, "everything's great!" Days two and three of Sao Paulo Fashion Week were decidedly more Brazilian than day one. The Japanese crew was still present, but the shows were all about the things Brazil does best: swimsuits and incredible bodies (see photos). There was enough gratuitous skin to keep the masses happy following the national futebol team's 0-0 draw at home with arch-rival Argentina. We checked out the game at a dinner hosted by our homeboy and Brazilian TV star Henry Castelli, shaggy-haired paparazzi fodder and one of the country's biggest celebs.

Being that we'd never been to Sao Paulo's version of Fashion Week, we were a little confused when we strolled in on Tuesday morning to the cavernous Fundacao Bienal de Sao Paulo pavilion that houses the bulk of the shows -- and found ourselves surrounded by hordes of Japanese people. We chalked it up to our general state of confusion, the 9 a.m. caipirinhas we'd had on the way from the airport, and the fact that this city is like a huge, denser version of LA. Turns out we were in the right spot, however. (Check out our photo gallery for full Day 1 action.) This edition of SPFW coincided with Sao Paulo's Japan week, the 100th anniversary of the arrival of the first Japanese immigrants to Brazil (Sao Paulo has the largest population of Japanese people outside of Tokyo). The special Japan theme was enough to draw Japanese fashion bigshots like Kenzo Takada, Issey Miyake prez Nobuyuki Ota, clusters of elegant Japanese fashion women, gaggles of Japanese schoolgirls, and of course, us.