On April 27th, São Paulo Fashion Week (SPFW) was happening. While the show from the brand Ocksa was going on, one of the models, Tales Cotta, 26 years old, was walking and started to trip over his feet, fainting on the runway.
At first, people thought it was part of the show, but when he was assisted and taken into an ambulance, still alive, out of where the Ocksa show was placed, it started to get serious. Later the information that Tales had died spread. Even after what happened, the event still wasn’t interrupted.
Ocksa’s runway started at 04h30 PM, and Cotta’s time of death was 06h50 PM of the same day, and the information came in while other shows were on the schedule, which went until 10h30 PM.
Image Source: Instagram
To these brands, the organization gave the option to cancel the activities, to which they said no, even being enormously shocked, and decided, out of respect, to initiate each show with a minute of silence in behalf of Tales Cotta’s death, whose cause is still unknown. But both friends and family said he was a healthy man and see no apparent reason to what took place at SPFW.
Models walking for the brand Ponto Firme entered the runway holding posters with the words “amor” (love) and “luto” (mourning). The singer Rico Dalasam spoke his heart while performing at the Cavalera’s show, saying: “The kid just died and you are here, as if life was worthless. No one should be here.” The audience recorded and applauded his criticism not only towards the brands, but also, and mainly, towards society.
Ocksa helped the model, took him to the hospital, the other brands offered the world a minute of silence to honor Tales’ life and mourn his death, people strongly agreed with Dalasam’s well spoken words and posts were made on instagram justifying the decision of continuing the show.
Ocksa declared to be deeply devastated and sad by the loss of a friend. And on behalf of all the members of the team, they apologized for carrying the event on, even with the information they had backstage. They still said that even if Tales had just fallen or fainted, they should not have continued with the show.
The declaration received many critics but Heloisa Cotta, the model’s mother, declared that the brand did right to keep going, once Tales was a professional and the interruption of the event was not going to bring him back. She didn’t put any guilt on Ocksa’s shoulders.
Still, the thought that remains is the one that makes all of us think whether what happened is a reflection of society. Life is an industry now? And the industry became life?
Fashion itself has been more than criticised by the way people are shown, as if they were products, and even with the attempts to save fashion’s image, by embracing all kinds of beauty, Tales Cotta’s case was meaningful, it meant something, it meant that the show was worth more, it meant that society is blind to life.
In this situation, even though Ocksa did what they could to help the model, out of respect for life, the brands should have considered another solution to honor Cotta’s name.
Tales’ body was taken to Minas Gerais, and hopes are that further information on the cause of death will soon be discovered. But for now, all we have is everything that happened to think about so we can plan the next step as a, hopefully, more sensible and better society.