SAO PAULO, June 15, 2009 (AFP) - 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 Wednesday 17 June.

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, a regular who this time will also be turning up as the wife of US footballer Tom Brady, whom she married in February.

Adding to the mix will be an unprecedented number of black models finally given their break under a new quota system imposed by the organizers 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 colorful takes on derivative European-inspired cuts, it's the furore over skin color that has propeled 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 percent of the models would be black or indigenous.

Meanwhile, although Luz is basking in the bigger pay his rumored 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.

"She is a person I admire a lot, a friend in my life, who I worked with, and who I stay in contact with. Beyond that I can't say any more. We're friends," Luz said in his first public interview, with Brazilian television late last month.

He added that, although his modeling career has taken off since meeting the Madonna last year on a photo shoot they shared for a US magazine, he remained a "normal guy."

Before being snapped kissing Madonna after a Rio de Janeiro concert she gave, Luz was an unknown talent doing catwalk shows for 170 dollars a time.

Now, he said, he is buying an apartment in Rio.by Marc Burleigh