AsFour vs. Campana Brothers

The Campana+Melissa bag

The Campana brothers

Drawing inspiration from Brazilian street life and carnival culture, the brothers FERNANDO AND HUMBERTO CAMPANA combine found objects – such as scraps of wood and fabric off-cuts – with advanced technologies to create a vibrant, energetic and definitively Brazilian approach to design.

Taking their cue from everyday scenarios and using unexpected combinations of found materials – such as rubber hose, tissue paper, string or furry toys –Fernando and Humberto Campana transform modest materials into objects that celebrate the discarded and mundane and are instilled with the spirit of contemporary Brazil that they describe as “zest for life”.

Neither brother intended to be a designer. Humberto, born in the Rio Claro area of São Paulo in 1953, originally studied law, but began to design furniture in the mid 1980s after Fernando, born in Brotas in 1961, had completed his architectural degree.

Central to their practice is the importance of materials. The challenge, as the Campanas see it, is to transform something poor into something decadent and opulent.


AsFour, New York fashion collective

They designed the circle bag, very much like the Campana bag.

Campana chair: the Favela chair, one of their more famous designs

Campana chair

Another Campana design

I believe that design inspirations are not really in a vacuum. It's not as simple as ripping off or copying somebody's design.


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Could it be that the Campana brothers and AsFour were inspired by the same thing and produced designs that are quite similar? It's not fair to say one ripped off the other. What do you think?