The picturesque eastern city home to China's best-known porcelain has seen an influx of young professionals seeking to learn an ancient art taught there for more than a thousand years.

Times are tough for young people in China, with youth unemployment at record highs, sluggish economic growth and, for many, the opportunities their parents' generation enjoyed are simply not attainable.

But in Jingdezhen they find something different: low rent, a slower pace of life and a proximity to nature in a city of just 1.6 million inhabitants, very small by Chinese standards.

From her one-bedroom apartment on the seventh floor, He Yun, a 28-year-old illustrator, enjoys a panoramic view of the surrounding green hills for just 500 yuan ($68) a month.

She arrived in Jingdezhen in June after being laid off and found a place where she didn't feel "any pressure".

"I came because on social media everyone was saying that it was a great place for craft fans, like me, and that there was a scent of freedom," she said.

"When I lost my job, I stayed at home and got depressed. But once I arrived here, I found that it's super easy to make friends."

"No more need to set the alarm in the morning," she smiled.

"I have zero pressure now!"

- 'Looking for meaning' -

A typical day for He starts with a laid-back breakfast, before heading to a workshop to make her ceramic candle holders and necklaces, which are then fired in one of the city's many kilns.

"At the end of the afternoon, we go to the surrounding villages and swim in the streams to relax," she said.

"I put my work on Xiaohongshu" -- a Chinese app similar to Instagram -- "where people contact me to buy. But we mainly sell at the market," she said.

Between trendy cafes, boutiques and stands offer glasses, bowls, cups, teapots, plates, necklaces or earrings.

Chen Jia, 24 with dyed red hair, makes feminist pendants in the shape of sanitary napkins.

A music graduate who arrived in June, her first jobs as a piano teacher and in a milk tea shop and cafe weren't to her liking.

"I am looking for meaning in my life," she said.

"Many young people today no longer want to clock in at work at a fixed time."

China's transformative economic rise was built on the backs of a growing middle class, who were promised they could enjoy the trappings of prosperity and give their children a better life if they worked hard enough.

But the country's millennials and Gen Z have faced altogether different prospects: youth unemployment has reached a record level, exceeding 20 percent according to official figures, and pay is low.

It's in that context that the "tangping" counterculture has thrived.

Literally meaning "lying flat", it's come to represent a general rejection of society's expectations, giving up a great career and money to concentrate on a simple life and pleasures.

And Jingdezhen has become a haven for those seeking just that.

At the Dashu pottery school, around 20 students work with clay on their pottery wheels or chat as they sip iced lattes. Training costs 4,500 yuan a month ($617), a very affordable price.

"Many young people cannot find work" explained the 39-year-old director who calls herself Anna.

"They come here to reduce their anxiety."

"Ceramics are very accessible. In two weeks, they can produce simple works and sell them at markets."

- 'New life' -

One of them, Guo Yiyang, 27, resigned in March from a well-paid job as a computer programmer.

After working overtime for years, he said he wanted to "take a breather".

"In big cities... you just work. You don't have your own life," he said, adding he "never again" sees himself working that way.

"The desire for another way of life" is also what motivated Xiao Fei, 27, a former interior designer who resigned and came to Jingdezhen in June.

"I didn't have time for myself," she said. "I came home tired and I didn't want to talk to others."

"I feel happier, more free and I meet people who have the same ideals."

According to Chinese media, 30,000 young urbanites lived in Jingdezhen in 2022.

Few stay long-term but Xiao already knows that she doesn't want to go back.

"After tasting this new life, I don't want to go back to an office job at all."

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The Democrat took a presidential tone as he urged an end to the "poisonous atmosphere" in Washington and announced a major speech on aid for Ukraine.

It capped a week during which he rolled out a series of voter-friendly announcements on health care and student debt, while his rivals were grabbing unwanted headlines with their brutal infighting.

The contrast could not have been clearer with Republicans, whose ability to legislate has been thrown into turmoil after hardliners ousted their own House speaker Kevin McCarthy.

The 80-year-old Biden, who is battling low approval ratings ahead of next year's US presidential election, also stayed silent on his likely 2024 rival Donald Trump's appearance in court in New York in a fraud case.

"Biden being in the background is a very good strategy," Robert Rowland, a political communication expert at the University of Kansas, told AFP.

"He should demonstrate he is a strong president and let the Republican bloodbath unfold. He cannot do anything about it, he might as well let the Democrats benefit from it."

- 'Split screen' -

The strategy plays into the White House's "split screen strategy" to highlight the contrast with the Republicans -- often literally using side-by-side images on social media.

That also involves using the power and symbolism of the presidency, with Biden giving televised remarks from behind a lectern in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

Biden urged squabbling Republicans to work with Democrats on Ukraine and also to avoid the threat of another government shutdown next month, after narrowly averting one at the weekend.

"We need to stop seeing each other as enemies," he said.

Then Biden returned to the policies he hopes will win over voters, announcing a further $9 billion in student debt relief, after the Supreme Court canceled his loan forgiveness program in June.

Biden said drugmakers have agreed to negotiate on reducing prices, a key plank of his bid to cut soaring healthcare costs ahead of elections.

And he hosted a photo-friendly event to celebrate disability legislation featuring US actress Selma Blair, who has multiple sclerosis -- during which her support dog rested its head on the presidential foot.

- 'Always fighting' -

Republicans have noticed the strategy, and are not happy.

"Why is it that Republicans are always fighting among themselves," lamented Trump, whose hardline Republican allies launched the coup against McCarthy.

Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina who is a close Trump ally, said the turmoil means Biden "gets a break and takes the focus and attention away from his many failures in office."

But the strategy is not without risk.

If the US becomes paralyzed by the political chaos, with the House in search of a speaker and a new budget shutdown cliff looming in November, it's unlikely Biden could stay so hands-off.

Voters are already concerned about Biden's age and effectiveness, while his message of economic revival has struggled to cut through.

And Biden was forced to reassure allies this week that US aid to Ukraine would continue, after it was left out of the deal to avoid a shutdown amid hardline Republican opposition.

Biden and the Democrats could now struggle to get a fresh package of assistance for Kyiv through a House convulsed by Republican infighting.

"If they have misread the level of Republican support, the strategy could lead to a failure to get additional funding for Ukraine," said Rowland.

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Maxime Lucu will start for Les Bleus instead of the injured Antoine Dupont with Charles Ollivon leading the side in the absence of the influential scrum-half against Italy in the crucial Rugby World Cup group game.

Shaven-headed half-back Lucu and abrasive flanker Ollivon, both 30, grew up among around 7,000 other habitants in 'Saint-Pee' in the rugby-mad Basque Country, near to the Spanish border and inland from Biarritz and Bayonne, two giants of the sport in France.

They started playing together as youngsters for the local Saint-Pee Union Club whose senior men's team now feature in the ninth tier and includes Maxime's older brother Ximun.

"I didn't really dream of being a professional rugby player back then as it was for other people," Lucu told AFP.

"Saint-Pee was a village, our parents played for the first-team in Federale 3 (the now 7th tier) at best.

"Dreaming of going pro was for those who played for Biarritz or Bayonne.

"Our first dream was to play in the Saint-Pee jersey, like our parents did together," he added.

Ollivon joined Bayonne's academy as a 15-year-old but now plays for Toulon on the Cote d’Azur and was France captain under Fabien Galthie until suffering an injury two years ago.

Lucu joined Bayonne's bitter rivals Biarritz aged 18 before moving to Bordeaux-Begles up the Atlantic coast in 2019.

In July 2022, the pair featured for Les Bleus together for the first time during a two-Test tour in Japan.

It came more than a decade on from lacing up their boots together as children at the Stade Municipale, a stone's throw away from a bakery selling the local delicacy, the Basque Cake, and surrounded by fields filled with sheep raised to make ewes' milk cheese.

"We didn't think at all they would get to the level and it's never happened to the club," Charles' dad Jean-Michel Ollivon told AFP.

"Getting to the professional level is already huge, but then the national team is unthinkable," he added.

- 'Excitement' -

Four months later, the pair from the village on the banks of the Nivelle river, lined up for France against Japan again.

The World Cup hosts strolled past the Brave Blossoms with Ollivon's first-half try, set-up by Lucu, one of the highlights in Toulouse.

"That move, they did it hundreds of times as youngsters," Michel Sein, their junior rugby coach at Saint-Pee, told AFP.

"Seeing it in an international match, it was the high point," he added.

This weekend, Saint-Pee will be on the world's stage with Lucu and Ollivon's France needing to avoid defeat to Italy in Lyon to guarantee a quarter-final spot.

Former World Rugby player of the year Dupont is expected to return from his cheekbone fracture for the knock-outs with France among the favourites to lift the Webb Ellis trophy.

"As Charles' friend since a young age, we registered as players for the first time at the same time and now playing a first World Cup game with him as captain and me as a starter, it's an important moment for us," Lucu told reporters this week.

"They're things that matter when you've been friends from a young age.

"I don't want to put too much negative pressure on myself, and make the most of the moment because it's an important moment for me and my career.

"I feel more excitement than the negative pressure," he added.

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On a recent evening in the mountain city of Taif, the Saudi women's national team ran through a one-touch passing drill ahead of a game against Pakistan, the latest in a series of friendlies intended to give the players some much-needed match experience.

The squad only formed two years ago and entered the FIFA rankings in March, at 171st place.

That milestone followed a string of firsts last year, from an inaugural international match against the Seychelles -– a 2-0 win –- to the establishment of a domestic women's premier league and a formal bid to host the 2026 AFC Women's Asian Cup.

All told, it has been a head-spinning few years for Saudi women who weren't even allowed to attend football matches until January 2018, let alone play at the professional level.

Yet 22-year-old midfielder Layan Jouhari told AFP she and her teammates were measuring their progress "one step at a time", even as they nurture ambitious long-term goals like playing at the World Cup one day.

"I watched the previous World Cup before this just out of curiosity and interest, but this year's World Cup was different," Jouhari said.

"I watched it with a different perspective, like these are now my opponents."

- Reforms and scepticism -

The eager Saudi players are standard-bearers for broader changes afoot in Saudi Arabia, a conservative petro-state trying to open up to the world while shifting away from fossil fuels.

In recent years, key restrictions that made the kingdom a magnet for criticism from women's rights activists have been lifted, although critics argue that legal discrimination remains in place in areas like divorce and child custody, and that women are frequently ensnared in an ongoing crackdown on dissent.

A FIFA+ documentary released last month tracks how the national team has seized on new freedoms, contrasting the hostility its members once received for pursuing a "masculine" sport with today's new era of deep-pocketed government support.

A press release for the film also highlights fans of the team outside Saudi Arabia, notably a social media post from the Pele Foundation describing its first FIFA match as "a historic day not only for you, but for everyone who loves football".

But not everyone is keen to fully embrace the Saudi football project.

Talks this year about the Saudi tourism board sponsoring the World Cup drew criticism from co-hosts New Zealand and Australia as well as US star Alex Morgan before FIFA announced in March no deal had been reached.

Monika Staab, the first coach of the Saudi national team who is now technical director, told AFP that critics would benefit from seeing the changes in Saudi Arabia up close.

"Someone who is not knowing what is happening here, I always recommend, come here to Saudi, have a look -– witness yourself what is happening," she said.

- On a mission -

For many national team players, football was a fact of life well before Saudi Arabia began championing women's sports under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Vision 2030 reform agenda.

"Football has been around in my family for as long as I remember. My older sisters used to play football and they made me fall in love with the game," said Bayan Sadagah, the 28-year-old team captain.

The new opportunities, however, have led her to consider quitting her day job as a nurse so she can focus on "one path".

The influx of international stars to the men's game gives added inspiration.

Jouhari described obsessing over videos of French star N'Golo Kante as a girl.

Now they are both midfielders for the club team Ittihad -- Kante on the men's side, Jouhari on the women's -- and Jouhari can't wait to meet him, though she says she "might lose my words" when it actually happens.

For Staab, who has worked with women's programmes in more than 90 countries, the focus is squarely on what her own players might achieve.

"I'm only interested in women's football because I want women's football to grow, I want women's football to develop -- that is my mission," she said.

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A new study published in the journal Scientific Reports now finds that physical responses -- including heart rate, breathing and the electrical conductivity of skin -- synchronize between audience members at classical concerts.

Individuals who rated more highly for personality traits such as openness were more likely to synchronize, while those with neurotic dispositions were less likely to align.

"When we talk about very abstract things such as aesthetic experiences, how you respond to art and to music, the body is always involved there," Wolfgang Tschacher, a psychologist at the University of Bern who led the research as part of the Experimental Concert Research project, told AFP.

This theory is known as "embodied cognition" -- the idea that the mind is not only connected to the body but that the body influences the mind -- which, while arguably intuitive to lay people, has been controversial in scientific circles.

To investigate, Tschacher and colleagues observed 132 audience members across three classical concerts.

All three played the same string quintet pieces: Ludwig van Beethoven's "Op. 104 in C minor," Johannes Brahms' "Op. 111 in G major," and "Epitaphs" by the contemporary composer Brett Dean.

The authors used overhead cameras and wearable sensors to monitor the participants, who filled in questionnaires about their personalities before the concert, and whether they enjoyed the performance and what their mood was afterward.

Overall, they found statistically significant synchronization on several measures -- people's hearts beat faster or slower during the same musical passages, as did their levels of "skin conductance."

Skin conductance is closely related to the body's flight or fight response. When it's high it indicates a state of arousal and can be linked to goosebumps on the skin; when it's low we are in a state of relaxation.

The cameras even caught alignment of body movements, which the authors wrote "appears noteworthy, as the audiences of all concerts were seated in dimmed lighting" and spread out due to the pandemic.

However, though people's breathing rates aligned, they did not actually inhale and exhale in unison.

- The power of music -

As one might expect, people whose personality types indicated, "a person who tends towards fearful behavior, warding off things, being more depressed," in Tschacher's words, were less likely to synchronize -- but so too were extroverts, which might seem counterintuitive.

"Extroverted people are very social, they tend to intermingle with people, they want to be in power, and they want to have a certain self-value," he said, adding he had seen this result in previous research too. While extroverts are outgoing, they focus less on the music.

For Tschacher, the findings are more evidence in favor of the "embodied cognition" theory and also help explain why public parades or military marches help build cohesion between participants.

And he expects the effects would be "even stronger" in other musical genres.

"There are additional reasons that people will synchronize in pop concerts, people move, they dance, and that's that is synchronized by the music and that would give even clearer results," he said.

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Here are some of the best known:

- Harold Pinter (2005) -

British playwright and political campaigner Harold Pinter, master of the pregnant pause, won in 2005 for what the Swedish Academy called his ability to get at the truth "under everyday prattle".

His more than 30 plays dealt with domination and submission, threat and injustice and gave rise to the adjective "pinteresque" -- used to describe the sense of menace running through a work and those silences that speak volumes.

Never afraid to speak his mind, Pinter called US President George W. Bush a "mass murderer" and British Prime Minister Tony Blair a "deluded idiot" for invading Iraq.

- Dario Fo (1997) -

Italian playwright, director and performer Dario Fo skewered people in power in a series of satires that were staged worldwide, the best known of which are "Accidental Death of an Anarchist" and "Mistero Buffo" ("Comic Mystery").

The "Accidental Death of an Anarchist" was based on the case of an Italian railroad worker who mysteriously falls out of a Milan police station window while being falsely accused of terrorism.

"Mistero Buffo" was his one-man political telling of the Passion of the Christ, which the Vatican denounced as "the most blasphemous show in the history of television".

- Samuel Beckett (1969) -

The avant-garde Irish playwright produced one of the 20th century's most popular plays, "Waiting for Godot", in which as one dubious Irish critic memorably put it, "nothing happens, twice".

Born a minority Protestant in a stifling censorious Catholic Ireland, he fled to Paris in the 1930s where he remained for the rest of his life, writing in both English and French.

"Godot" is the existential tale of two bickering tramps who wait in vain for someone called Godot who never shows up.

Literary critics have long argued over who or what Godot actually represents, with interpretations ranging from God to death.

- Eugene O'Neill (1936) -

The father of modern American theatre brought the grim dramas of everyday life to stages whose staple had previously been vaudeville.

Murder, suicide and insanity were recurring themes in his work, which included the autobiographical "Long Day's Journey into Night" and "The Iceman Cometh".

In his Nobel acceptance speech, O'Neill hailed the prize as "a symbol of the recognition by Europe of the coming-of-age of the American theatre...worthy at last to claim kinship with the modern drama of Europe."

- Luigi Pirandello (1934) -

This Italian playwright was chased out of a Rome theatre a century ago when he staged his absurdist masterpiece "Six Characters in Search of an Author" (1921), in which a group of characters bursts into a rehearsal and share their story with the actors.

The inventor of the "play within a play" only began writing for the stage in his 40s.

Drawing inspiration from his wife's mental illness, he pondered the meaning of objective truth in philosophical works that blurred the lines between reality and performance.

- George Bernard Shaw (1925) -

The Irish-born playwright, intellectual and socialist activist is one of the few people to have won both an Oscar and a Nobel.

He baulked at accepting the Nobel, declaring "I can forgive (Alfred) Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize," but later relented.

He struggled to get published for many years before starting to write for the stage.

His most famous play is "Pygmalion", which was turned into the wildly successful Broadway musical and film "My Fair Lady" for which Shaw won the Oscar for best screenplay.

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"Guys have nice legs too. It's time to see their legs!" creative director Veronique Nichanian said backstage at the show.

It has been a menswear week with plenty of skin, and Hermes kept with the trend.

"I don't yet do skirts for men, but I like shorts and particularly short shorts," Nichanian said.

There were also some transparent fabrics -- another notable trend this week -- alongside ankle-length trousers and souped-up tank tops.

Nichanian said that as gender barriers break down in fashion, "it's especially the men that are coming to steal from women's wardrobes."

"And it's interesting to offer them materials they've never had. I'm delighted with this openness to a more feminine world. This widens the scope of the men's wardrobe and allows all men to express their personality, their desires," she said.

Contrasting with the bold colours of previous collections, this time the Hermes palette was "mineral" with shades of grey, beige and faded blue -- "a desire for a very light summer with a little breeze blowing", as Nichanian put it.

The sandals had openings on the sides but covered the toes, since "men, in general, do not like their feet," said the house's shoe designer, Pierre Hardy.

"Much of the collection is sporty and casual, and this sandal is a sort of alternative to the sneaker... an easy-to-wear casual shoe," he told AFP.

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Mohammed Ashi's haute couture show -- his first as part of the official roster after years of dressing top celebrities -- is "the peak of my career," he told AFP at a cocktail soiree at the Ritz Hotel in Paris this week, part of a lavish Saudi PR campaign throughout this fashion season.

Ashi forged his own path, having left the kingdom three decades ago, but his promotion to the top league is neatly timed as Riyadh announces its own fashion week in October and says new freedoms will create retail opportunities worth $32 billion a year.

Fashion is just one strand of a strategy that has seen de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman divert its oil wealth into movies, sports, video games and tourism, while overseeing dramatic social changes within the kingdom.

Many worried it was all just a smokescreen to defuse criticism of his human rights record, especially after the gruesome murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

But the changes ran further and deeper than almost anyone expected.

"For the first two years, I almost didn't believe it was real, but then I realised, wow, it IS real," said Yousef Akbar, 37, who began his eponymous fashion label in Australia in 2017 and has dressed the likes of Nicole Kidman and Rita Ora.

"I really never thought when I was growing up that this would happen. When I started my brand in Australia, I thought my whole life would be there since I'm a fashion designer," added Akbar, who now also runs his business from Jeddah.

- 'Big opportunities' -

The Saudi elite already spent vast sums on international luxury brands for events behind closed doors.

But the Saudi Fashion Commission claims new freedoms around public dress and a growing private sector will see retail sales surge by 48 percent to $32 billion between 2021 and 2025.

It wants a lot of this money to stay in the country, creating a Saudi 100 brands programme to incubate local designers.

CEO Burak Cakmak says there are stable foundations for a homegrown industry.

"Just because the country wasn't exposed to the rest of the world doesn't mean they are starting now," he told AFP in Paris. "I had an event for a brand this week that's been running since the 70s.'

While the queer community has heavily influenced the fashion industry around the world, LGBTQ people face severe repression in Saudi Arabia, which criminalises same-sex relations.

"(The authorities) are certainly aware that many couturiers and designers are gay," said Susanne Koelbl, author of "Behind the Kingdom's Veil".

Their approach is simply to "try to ignore it," she added, and the authorities are turning a blind eye to almost everything.

"Maybe you can't dance naked on the table, but almost anything else is possible now, as long as your family is OK with it and you are loyal to the ruler," Koelbl said.

Having repressed practically all opposition to his rule and stripped clerics of their power, there are few obstacles in Prince Mohammed's path.

"It's a well-planned, long-scheduled reform process which is about to change the society completely," said Koelbl.

"The Saudi people don't tend to be revolutionary and for the vast majority there are indeed new and big opportunities now, especially for women."

The excitement is certainly genuine for those who are benefitting.

"It sounds cliched, but seeing something happen that we all thought was impossible is very inspiring for my own business," said Akbar.

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What they do not know is that the waste will become part of a synthetic plastic fibre used to make blue denim cloth to create a dress for the eco-friendly fashion label Outa.

The pair are among around 15 "barbeshas", or informal rubbish collectors, taking part in the Kerkennah Plastic Free programme, backed by the European Union.

This aims to recover the 7,000 tonnes of plastic waste each year that end up littering beaches on the Kerkennah Islands 20 kilometres (12 miles) off the port city of Sfax.

Jean-Paul Pelissier, of the International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies (CIHEAM), is coordinating the EU-funded project.

He told AFP that on the archipelago, "we have an exciting environment in terms of nature and tranquillity. It's ideal for green tourism".

Pelissier said the islands were a passage point for migratory birds, and that its waters were abundant in Posidonia oceanica seagrass, or Neptune grass.

"But there's one thing you never see in the pictures -- the plastic," he said. Marine currents carry the waste from Europe into the Gulf of Gabes, and there it washes up to be collected by the barbeshas.

They take their daily harvest to a sorter which passes it on to a collection company and then it is fed into a crusher to be baled.

A partnership has been established with Seaqual Initiative, an international consortium which buys the marine plastic "at a remunerative and stable price all year round", Pelissier said.

- New opportunities -

The initiative's website says it "works with ocean clean-ups around the world to bring value to the waste that they recover".

Omar Kcharem is the boss of Kerkennah Plast, which compacts and crushes plastic, and he said working with Seaqual has created new opportunities, since marine plastic "does not have much value and does not bring in any money".

The plastic granules recovered after grinding the waste are transformed into "Seaqual Yarn" nylon fibre in Portugal, in one of just four factories in the world equipped with the technology.

"This is innovative," said Pelissier. "Four or five years ago, you couldn't recycle marine plastic because of its lengthy exposure to salt water and the sun."

He said Seaqual Yarn comprises around 10 percent of recycled marine plastic, but the aim is to increase this.

Apart from the Portugal side of the operation, the rest is definitely "Made in Tunisia".

In the coastal town of Ksar Hellal southeast of Monastir, a huge machine in the ultra-modern Sitex plant makes an infernal racket as it transforms the Seaqual Yarn into denim.

Sitex is a denim specialist that has supplied brands such as Hugo Boss, Zara and Diesel. Now Anis Montacer, founder of the Tunisian fabric and fashion brand Outa, has entered into a partnership with it.

He chose Sitex "for its sensitivity to the environment, because in 2022, 70 percent of their manufacturing was based on recycled fibres".

"We worked together to determine the proper yarn strength and the right indigo dye," he told AFP, adding that their collaboration will continue to expand Outa's colour range to include natural dyes.

- Higher costs -

"The entire process takes place in Tunisia, from the denim transformed in Ksar Hellal to the Tunisian seamstresses who work on the tailoring" for Outa, Montacer said.

Production costs are 20 percent higher, though, than for denim without the marine plastic content.

Despite this, Montacer believes he can "bring together other entrepreneurs and inspire designers to produce eco-responsible collections".

He called on renowned French designer Maud Beneteau, formerly of Hedi Slimane, to design Outa's first haute couture collection.

"We chose a high value collection because the production cost is higher than with normal thread to create denim fabric," Montacer said.

Outa creations first graced the catwalk during Tunis Fashion Week in June.

Beneteau saw the first Outa collection as "a challenge, a human dimension in this wonderful project that aligns with the idea of saving the planet".

She does say there were some difficulties working with a fabric that was "a little thick and stiff, originally designed for sportswear and ready-to-wear, rather than haute couture".

More used to fine silks, linen and cotton, she admits having some qualms working with the new fibre, even though like her peers in the fashion industry she tries to recycle and buy back unsold stocks in the fight against overconsumption.

But "when you think that this is recycled and ecological, that jobs have been created, people who pick up the plastic... it's a whole interesting chain," Beneteau said.

It's also a great yarn. Plastic fantastic: from sea waste to see waist, you might say...

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More than half of all adults in Brazil are overweight, but Momente is part of a growing movement of entrepreneurs, activists and models who are fed up with a fashion industry they say fails to fit their needs and shames them for their bodies.

"Society judged me based on one thing, so I took that thing and used it... to launch my business," says Momente, 34, dressed in a sheer black bodysuit created by Wondersize, the company she founded in 2017.

The former real-estate agent, who sports a pink mohawk and multiple tattoos, got the idea after feeling uncomfortable at the gym in clothes she says were too tight, turned transparent when stretched or bunched up around her thighs.

She decided to find a seamstress to help her make her own workout outfit.

It turned out so well she quit her day job and plunged headfirst into the fashion world, she says.

The rise of colorful, stylish clothes for Brazilians with large bodies is part of a broader international trend rejecting unrealistic standards of beauty, especially for women.

"The fashion industry needs to fit our bodies, not the other way around," says Momente.

- 'Identity and dignity' -

Major brands tend to dedicate at most a small portion of their lines to clothing in larger sizes, leaving "repressed" demand, says Marcela Liz, head of the Brazil Plus Size Association.

The plus-size sector grew in Brazil more than 75 percent in the decade through 2021, reaching sales of 9.6 billion reais (about $1.9 billion) that year, according to the association.

It projects sales will hit 15 billion reais by 2027 in Latin America's biggest economy.

"Supply has improved, but we're still not meeting demand," says Liz.

The nascent industry sashayed through Sao Paulo this month at the Pop Plus fair, where indie designers showed off sparkling skirts, racy tops, T-shirts stamped with bold statements and other clothes in sizes ranging up to 70.

"The market saw fat people as people who didn't like fashion, who just wanted to hide their bodies," says Flavia Durante, the activist who founded the fair in 2012.

"We had clothes, not fashion," she told AFP.

"Fashion isn't just about consumption. It's about identity and dignity."

- More work to do -

TV presenter and plus-size model Letticia Munniz has strutted the runway at glitzy Sao Paulo fashion week, made the cover of glossy magazines and been the face of numerous ad campaigns.

But she says real inclusion remains a long way off for the overweight and obese in Brazil -- 57 percent and 23 percent of the adult population, respectively, in the country of 203 million people.

"Things have improved, but our work is still seen as just checking a quota box. We're not seen as real equals," she says.

The activist and influencer, who usually wears custom-made clothes, says she is glad to see more plus sizes on runways -- but adds that doesn't necessarily mean they are actually available in stores.

She encourages her more than one million followers on social media to love themselves as they are.

"When you find something made to exalt your body instead of hide it, it changes everything," she says in one post.

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