Havaianas
MASS CULTURE PHENOMENON AND BRAZILIAN IDENTITY
ACADEMIC ESSAY
TÁBATA HUF 231257
28 MAY 2025
List of Figures
Figure 1 Double-page advertisement promoting Havaianas.
Figure 2 Screenshot of Havaianas campaign featuring Gigi Hadid.
HAVAIANAS: MASS CULTURE PHENOMENON AND BRAZILIAN IDENTITY
Havaianas, a Brazilian rubber sandal brand, represents more than casual footwear. It is a complex intersection of national identity, mass culture, and marketing strategy.
Since its 1964 launch by the company São Paulo Alpargatas, the sandals have evolved from everyday necessities into cultural symbols that transcend class boundaries. This essay examines how Havaianas functions as a mass culture phenomenon through theoretical frameworks established by Strinati, Marx, Althusser, and Hall. By analysing the brand’s strategic transformation from utilitarian footwear to a cultural symbol, I analyse how Havaianas simultaneously constructs and commodifies Brazilian identity through imagery that showcases beaches, carnivals, and an eternal summer aesthetic.
Havaianas sandals have been produced by São Paulo Alpargatas since 1964, decades later pioneering brand merchandising on Brazilian television. Due to that, there was an explosion in consumption (Ramos, 2012, p. 90) followed by a sharp decline due to the perception of the brand, which was good but cheap and associated with low-income consumers (Mager & Cipiniuk, 2018, p. 391). The company invested in a brand transformation to change this perception, opening sophisticated sales channels, hiring celebrity endorsements, expanding colour options, and developing collections targeting middle-class youth. The repositioning occurred after Brazil’s military regime (1964-1985). From 2000 onwards, clothing brands highlighted customer freedom in choosing their styles, contrasting the regime’s strictness (Ramos, 2012, p. 184). Havaianas exemplified this by allowing customers to choose the colour of their sandals. In society, the new appreciation of the brand changed people’s perceptions of using sandals on social occasions. Before that, wearing rubber sandals was considered inappropriate in most social situations, for being linked with popular culture. The transformation of the brand’s positioning is due to its marketing strategy.
FIGURE
Double-page advertisement promoting Havaianas.
Note: by juje80bis, 2009, (via Flickr).
In their branding, Havaianas uses images with a vibrant mix of colours and elements of Brazil (Figure 1). When people wear Havaianas, they become part of the Brazilian experience, which Mager & Cipiniuk describe as warmth, joy, beaches, eternal summer, football, and tourism (Mager & Cipiniuk, 2018, p. 397). The brand then creates an emotional attachment to Brazilians and an escapism from reality in Brazil. Today, Havaianas stand unanimously in the flip-flop and sandals market and is used by people from the simplest to the most sophisticated environments, being distributed in traditional retail outlets to international brand stores, such as Gucci (Ramos, 2012, p. 91). However, understanding how Havaianas functions as a cultural phenomenon requires examining it through established theoretical frameworks of mass culture and consumerism.
According to Strinati (2004, p. 10), mass culture is popular culture created by industrial largescale production methods and sold to mass consumers. He argues, “If culture cannot make money, it is unlikely to be produced” (Strinati, 2004, p. 10). A culture becomes mass culture when it manipulates its audience in favour of consumerism and uses a standardised and repetitive production format. Marx discusses the consumerism aspect. He called Commodity Fetishism the way products take on mystical qualities that mask human labour, creating a consumer culture where identity is sought through purchases (Marx, 1867). Ideology and hegemony concepts also help understand Havaianas’ effect on Brazilian culture. Ideology is a set of beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviours that are accepted and agreed upon to the point that they form a system of societal norms, establishing what is acceptable (O’Donnell, 2005, p. 5). Althusser’s Interpellation theory describes how individuals are “hailed” into subject positions, unconsciously internalising social expectations. In addition, hegemony is the control or authority that one group or belief holds over another, dominating and propagating practices (Baker, as cited in O’Donnell, 2005, p. 5). These theories help explain how Havaianas have achieved market and cultural dominance when applied to the Brazilian context.
Havaianas’s branding is consistently surrounded by cultural elements from Brazil, such as beaches, football, summer, and visual elements that resemble the Brazilian carnival, as seen in Figure 1. These elements appeal to Brazilians because they are a joyful, whimsical part of the culture to which most Brazilians relate. Even the brand’s slogan directly translates to “Everyone wears it”, highlighting its impact of surpassing barriers of class and taste. It can appeal to anyone. A Brazilian will probably not consider other brands when shopping for sandals, creating a homogenised culture (Strinati, 2004, p. 15). Moreover, the brand’s influence extends beyond market dominance into national identity formation.
Due to the historical conditions upon which Brazil was built, a duality between work and leisure interferes with the consolidation of national identity (Ramos, 2012, p. 48). Strinati (2004, p. 12) described mass culture as “one which celebrates trivial, sentimental, immediate and false pleasures at the expense of serious, intellectual, time-honoured and authentic values”. Havaianas is hegemonic as the number one used brand, but it also spreads a hegemonic discourse when marketing shallow cultural elements. It consolidates the elements of joy in Brazil, which can prevent the audience from recognising deeper issues. By always showing joy related to the environment, the country’s wealth is justified by nature, its beaches, and its people. Wealth is not in the economy or the population’s quality of life but in natural beauty (Ramos, 2012, p. 101). That emphasis can mask social calamities such as poverty, violence and deficient public education, which are experienced by many Brazilians, especially in Rio de Janeiro, where Havaianas bases its campaigns.
As a symbol of national identity, Havaianas has become an ideological code. For Brazilians, the brand can be turned into an “idol,” a figure to be admired and revered. It offers stability and brings social groups together (Mager & Cipiniuk, 2018, p. 404). This ideological code exists not only in Brazil but also internationally.
FIGURE
Screenshot of Havaianas campaign featuring Gigi Hadid.
Note: From Gigi Hadid x havaianas flip flops collab, by Havaianas, 2025, (via Havaianas).
Havaianas’ branding tends to be the world’s perception of Brazil. In an interview for UOL Prime in November 2024, the Brazilian award-winning actress Fernanda Torres explained why that is relevant to Brazilians. She stated, “I know French culture, American culture, Russian culture ... But they do not know Brazilian culture ... When someone crosses the border and takes something personal to us abroad, it is this feeling of national pride.” (Torres, 2024)
An example is Havaianas’ campaign with Gigi Hadid (Figure 2). It shows the model at Ipanema Beach wearing a shirt saying, “It’s better in Brazil.” This campaign exemplifies Havaianas as a mass culture phenomenon, using Brazilian elements internationally to elevate the sandal’s status and promote purchasing Havaianas as a way to participate in Brazilian culture. It focuses on lifestyle and identity, an instance of “material relations between persons and social relations between things” (Marx, 1867).
In this process, Brazilian identity is interpellated through ideological means, as the brand hails local and global audiences to recognise and consume a particular image of Brazil. As Althusser argues, ideology functions by recruiting individuals as subjects (Strinati, 2004, p. 142); Brazilians are invited to see themselves in this idealised, commodified version of national culture. In the same way, the brand positions international consumers to admire and desire the same identity that is strategically crafted. This analysis highlights ideological mechanisms, but it is important to consider how audiences receive and resist these messages.
Although mass culture theory suggests the mass audience can be easily manipulated, Strinati questioned whether the idea of a passive, undifferentiated audience can be sustained (Strinati, 2004, p. 44). Stuart Hall proposed that images are decoded in specific historical contexts, with interpretation varying by social context (O’Donnell, 2005, p. 527). In that regard, Hall established three social positions: dominant, oppositional and negotiated. The audience can accept the intended meaning, allowing the dominant position to be entirely accepted, whereas the oppositional position contests the dominant meaning, accepting the opposite.
The negotiated position happens if viewers align with the dominant ideology but oppose some aspects. In the case of Havaianas, the dominant position prevails. Brazilians are proud of the brand and “see the value created by Havaianas as a desired value, representative of its time” (Mager & Cipiniuk, 2018, p. 405).
Growing up in Brazil, I have not seen customers question whether they should or should not buy from Havaianas. It is a national pride and Brazil’s most trusted sandals brand. In this case, Havaianas being a mass culture phenomenon is not entirely negative. It is partly negative because Brazilians feel they must buy from a specific brand; it promotes the established ideological code and hegemony. However, because it has become a familiar, trusted product, owning and seeing other Brazilians wearing it is comforting.
In conclusion, Havaianas exemplifies how a commercial product can become a symbol of national identity through strategic mass culture mechanisms. Through marketing, visual language, celebrity endorsement, and references to joyful aspects of Brazilian culture, Havaianas sells a curated image of Brazil. Theories of mass culture, commodity fetishism, ideology, and interpellation reveal how the brand reinforces hegemonic narratives with which Brazilians identify. Havaianas have become a commodified national pride while shaping global perceptions of the country. In the case of this brand, Hall’s theory of dominant position prevails, reflecting a society where mass culture can influence people and culture for profit.
REFERENCES
O’Donnell, V. (2005). Cultural studies theory: The production and consumption of meaning In K. Smith, S. Moriarty, G. Barbatsis, & K. Kenney (Eds.), Handbook of visual communication: Theory, methods, and media (pp. 521–547). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Mager, G., & Cipiniuk, A. (2018). A construção simbólica na gestão da marca Havaianas [The Symbolic Construction in the Brand Management of Havaianas]. ModaPalavra E-periódico, 11(22), 1982–615x. https://doi.org/10.5965/198261x11222018381
Marx, K. (1867). Capital: A critique of political economy, Volume One (B. Fowkes, Trans.). Penguin Books.
Ramos, C. de B. (2012). A identidade nacional na publicidade: Havaianas e Brasil [National identity in advertising: Havaianas and Brazil] (Master’s thesis). University of Santa Cruz do Sul. https://repositorio.unisc.br/jspui/handle/11624/403
Strinati, D. (2004). An introduction to theories of popular culture. (2nd ed.). https://doi. org/10.4324/9780203645161
Torres, F. (2024, November). [Interview]. Efeito Fernanda Torres: Outros brasileiros que exportaram excelência para o mundo [Fernanda Torres Effect: Other Brazilians who exported excellence to the world]. Forbes Brasil. https://forbes.com.br/forbeslife/2025/02/efeitofernanda-torres-outros-brasileiros-que-exportaram-excelencia-para-o-mundo/
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