This week La Rural plays host to BAF Week as the Fall collections go on display on the catwalk. Photographer Patricio Guillamón went backstage to get a behind-the-scenes peak and shares his view with our readers here.

Passersby wouldn’t bat an eye at the crumbly exterior of Casa FOA annual design festival. But just one step into the surprisingly lavish interior sheds a new light on an old building.

Founders of Greca sustainable design group have been seeing buttons – discarded buttons – in ways most people wouldn’t dream of, as Tari Gaffney discovers.

In keeping with this week’s circus theme, Kyle Younker interviews Arnoldo Iriarte, whose shoemaking career, started at the age of 14, has taken an unconventional turn.

Imagine someone has made a patchwork quilt out of different types of floral, stripy and shiny lycra. No imagine that this person has taken a look at their creation and thought: “you know what? This would look really good as a pair of knickers”.

“Alpargatas sí, libros no!” said Juan Domingo Perón in an appeal against universities’ elitism and expressing his favour for salt-of-the-earth blue collar work. This is what alpargatas, the ubiquitous Argentine take on the espadrille, have symbolised for almost two centuries.

In Buenos Aires, a city famous for both its style and its Italian heritage, you don’t have to look very far to find a beautiful suit. But if you want to take your interest in tailoring further than just admiring shop windows, there are two exhibitions than will cater to your needs.

The season ahead is looking dark. Autumn and winter fast approaching, Argentina is gearing up to face the chill in heavy fabrics, a monochromatic palette and with die-hard allegiance to punk-inspired fashion. The three days of the 2010 autumn/winter edition of Buenos Aires Fashion Week showcased collections which are testament to the city’s rising recognition and status amongst the world’s style capitals.

“Beauty may be attractive, but ugliness is more fun,” said a New York Times critic after reading Umberto Eco’s book ‘On Ugliness’. Creative director Javier Lourenço agrees wholeheartedly. His website, The UncoolHunter, turns its back on the alluring and the beautiful in favour of the freakish, the pretentious, the cheap and the ridiculous.

The art of knitting is experiencing a renaissance. Where once associated only with grey-haired grandmothers and nightmarish visions of lumpy Christmas sweaters, it is now women under the age of 35 who are the craft’s fastest-growing market in the West. However, although firmly established in creative circles and as a popular pastime in Europe and the US, is the knitting phenomenon yet to hit Argentina?