“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?

Buenos Aires has a knack for blending the old with the new, and so do the city’s people. Argentine designer Aidana Baldassarre takes the concept a step further by creating masterpieces out of the city’s discarded materials. For seven years Baldassarre has been making wearable art out of recycled and reused materials to display at fashion shows and galleries, proving that no material should be thrown away.

“I want my products, clothing or accessories, to transmit love, happiness and comfort,” says clothing designer and art student Ivana Crivos. “My designs are basically about the human body. I think about the requirements of modern life.”

“It’s always good to do things with acrobats because they have skills and powers that normal models don’t,” Cherry matter-of-factly explains between bites of a milanesa sandwich. We’re sitting in a majestically crumbling, high-ceilinged studio near the flea market in Palermo Hollywood.

The phrase ‘Eco-friendly fashion’ is enough to strike fear into the heart of any self-respecting fashionista. Images of hippy-style hemp trousers with a suspiciously musty smell and jumpers that appear to have been crudely stitched from an old burlap sack come to mind.

London’s Soho media pack and New York’s underground scene, wannabe superstars and dishevelled jeunesse dorée. Bolivia is a brand that dares to be different – the name in itself says it all.

No one needs a new dress. It’s not as if the fate of the world rests on my getting a perfect corset fitted to my bosom – although it would be quite funny if it did – “Lace me in tighter, dammit, or we’re all doomed!” No, a dress, particularly a pretty, floaty, floor-length strapless number, is not an essential survival tool. Shame.

What would Jasper Conran, the British homeware and fashion designer, make of a necklace made out of orthopaedic leather? Or a lampshade made out of sponge lycra? He is, after all, hailed as the fountainhead of industrial design savvy.

I do not own a pair of Havaianas. I know, I know, not having a pair of the flip flops is basically like saying I’ve come to Argentina and don’t really like steak, thanks.