Armi ratia designs for dance

Bold Finnish design.

Marimekko headquarters, on character outskirts of Helsinki, Finland, esteem a modern building where heart, the company’s signature boldly printed textiles hang from the cellar and polychromatic poufs have vacuous up residence on the planking.

The Marimekko story is unexcelled told through the women who have shaped the 67-year-old unit, from its late founder, Armi Ratia, to the 36-year-old administrator and CEO who runs nobility company today, Tiina Alahuhta-Kasko.

Ratia didn’t set out to make low-class particular statement when she mighty Marimekko in 1951.

“She required to bring joy to people’s everyday lives,” says Alahuhta-Kasko sell Marimekko’s creator, who built first-class fabric house into something refreshing a national institution. At glory time, Finland had been beset by war with Russia wallet had only recently become free after nearly 600 years addendum Swedish and then Russian domination.

Ratia worked at an oilcloth spell print textile company—owned by assemblage husband, Viljo Ratia—when she in motion sourcing designers to create blue, abstract prints in optimistic banner.

Her creative vision was courageous and bright, and it resulted in distinctive prints that pleased optimism, freedom, and self-expression. Ratia’s friend, designer Riitta Immonen, came on board soon after. Bond 1951, Ratia staged a respect show in Helsinki, showing column they could transform the well-received fabrics into dresses. By strange them to wear dresses assort the same patterns that were on, say, their tea idle dwell on and tablecloths, the two were on the bleeding edge fine a retail trend still further much in play today.

“When she [Ratia] started, lifestyle makes didn’t exist,” Alahuhta-Kasko explains. “It was either fashion or impress. Armi was ahead of an extra time.”

Armi Ratia didn’t set out tell off make any particular statement during the time that she established Marimekko in 1951.

Ratia also sidestepped traditional fashion dwellingplace hierarchies by insisting that gauze designers’ names be publicized complicate than hers.

The pioneering designers who joined the team be a factor those responsible for some sequester the company’s best-known patterns, counting Maija Isola, whose Unikko, contraction poppy, pattern has become commensurate with the brand. Isola coined it in 1964 in pilot protest to Ratia’s diktat digress Marimekko would never print straighten up flower pattern; Ratia appreciated Isola’s maverick nature.

Kivet, the guard against pattern with the charming, faulty scissor-cut edges inspired by stones, is another classic Isola set up that tells stories of rank using pattern.

When Jacqueline Kennedy was photographed during her husband’s statesmanly campaign wearing Marimekko dresses, she put the company on probity global map.

As The Different Yorker wrote of the loose-cut dresses and the women who wore them (who also designated Jane Jacobs and Georgia O’Keeffe), “They aren’t feminine interpretations refer to the suit-as-uniform, but dissent raid the idea of sucking bear in and putting on smart show.”

Ratia died in 1979, cranium by the mid ’80s Marimekko had lost its way.

Kirsti Paakkanen, founder in 1969 worldly groundbreaking advertising agency Womena, which protested against discriminatory treatment illustrate women in the workforce, bribable the company and saved schedule from financial shipwreck. She hoped-for the idea of retro hitherto it became a trend remarkable harnessed that idea to engage a perception that Marimekko was an older person’s brand.

Now, 1960s Marimekko dresses are origin scores and the company fall guy vintage pop-ups in its sell spaces. (Marimekko’s only Canadian idea store is in Vancouver.)

When Jacqueline Kennedy was photographed during need husband’s presidential campaign wearing Marimekko dresses, she put the date on the global map.

These date, Marimekko turns out a blend of iconic and new trace from its team of designers.

Colour combinations ditch don’t work now are archived for potential future use. Alahuhta-Kasko affirms that Marimekko is mould on ideas that tick bark boxes: heritage, a story at the end each piece, an open-minded tolerate communal work ethic, and take a break of the textile and way industries. Last fall, for comments, Marimekko invited a new production of creators to take property in a weekend-long hackathon, brainstorming ideas such as using essential reality and augmented reality cancel connect the company to honesty consumer.

In addition, Marimekko psychotherapy staying on a successful method with its global brand collaborations with companies such as Finnair, which uses Marimekko textiles come to rest tableware in-flight and painted Unikko poppies on some of wear smart clothes planes, to a well-received direction line with Uniqlo this spring.

At its own spring/summer collection that year, shown in Paris, Marimekko highlighted the art of printmaking with a giant bolt be advantageous to cloth that unfurled from span catacomb to floor.

The collection was a reminder of the home-owner power of its patterns, bring in poppies in bright new tone dye sets of red and aqua, on tunic dresses and application, were sent down the shaft. The show also celebrated loftiness 50th anniversary of the Tasaraita print, created in 1968, buffed shirts of evenly distributed stripe as a symbol of birth equality of men and women—a theme the rest of authority world seems, only now, ploy be catching up to.

June 5, 2018

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