SAO PAULO - A BRAZILIAN model described as Madonna's 'toyboy' and a bevy of black beauties are to attract intense media attention to the Sao Paulo Fashion Week - Latin America's biggest style showcase - which opens on Wednesday.

Jesus Luz, a 22-year-old Rio boy who has found worldwide fame after being photographed kissing and accompanying pop star Madonna over the past few months, is to be in the first day's shows, a report in Brazil's Folha de S. Paulo newspaper said.

He will share the catwalk with Brazil's bona fide supermodel Gisele Bundchen.

Adding to the mix will be an unprecedented number of black models finally given their break under a new quota system imposed by the organisers who had been threatened with a racism lawsuit by prosecutors.

The celebrity buzz and racial quota could give the SPFW, as it is known in Brazil, the international profile it has long been gunning for.

While Brazilian designers have been praised for their colourful takes on derivative European-inspired cuts, it's the furore over skin colour that has propelled their twice-yearly fashion event into foreign media coverage.

In the last SPFW, in January, just eight of the 344 models were black. Previous iterations have been equally white-dominant affairs.

But that low proportion of blacks, in a country where half the population of 190 million is of African descent, raised hackles with Sao Paulo's prosecutors.

Their warnings of legal action, and a vow by an anti-racism group, Educafro, to hold a rogue black fashion event in front of the SPFW, prompted the move to a quota system, backed by fines for any recalcitrant labels.

Under the deal, the SPFW promised that at least 10 per cent of the models would be black or indigenous.

Meanwhile, although Luz is basking in the bigger pay his rumoured link-up with Madonna has brought him, the young model has dashed any speculation of a lasting relationship with the 50-year-old Material Girl. -- AFP