Rio Bravo.(Osklen; fashion)

Byline: editor: Sally Singer MARK HOLGATE

Just what the (former) sports doctor ordered: an ethically minded, eco-friendly Brazilian label called Osklen.

Among his many achievements, Oskar Metsavaht, the 46-year-old founder of the Brazilian label Osklen, can count the following: training in sports medicine at Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital in Paris; being involved in Agenda 21, a United Nations initiative directed toward global sustainability; and currently working on a tome called The Ipanema Way: The 30-Day No-Diet Pleasure Plan for Losing Weight and Getting More Out of Life . Clearly Metsavaht does not exist in the same realm as other designers, and he is not in the least concerned by that. "I don't even think of myself as a designer," he says modestly on a recent trip to New York, where he has decamped after a week snowboarding with his three kids in Aspen. "I can't sketch, I don't draw. . . . Osklen is more like an expression of a lifestyle." Which means the kind of ecologically conscious, ethically aware way of living that he and fellow Osklen devotees want to pursue.

Yet his collections show that he does indeed design, a process that is informed both by his previous life--"As a physician, you are always looking at the body"--and his avid devotion to adrenaline-charged pursuits like mountaineering and surfing. So there are curvy jackets with high collars, the better to protect a woman's face from the elements; lean pants with ergonomic seams at the knees, so they move as their wearer does; and racerbacks on evening dresses because, contrary to popular belief about the free-and-easy Brazilian attitude ...