Word: marimekkos
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...Today Marimekko casually thwarts a fashion system that decrees that if your not-so-stylish cousin in the burbs wears it then it's not cool enough for trendsetters like Manolo Blahnik or Anna Sui. Yet both designers are proudly part of a global club known as the Marimekkoites. Sui has been collecting vintage examples of the cheerful prints for years, and this spring Blahnik has created three shoe styles in Marimekko prints. H&M has launched a capsule collection this month featuring the most popular patterns from the 1950s to the 1970s. "Marimekko feels so modern," says Blahnik...
...exactly is Marimekko? The name translates literally as "Mary's dress" and figuratively as a dress for Everywoman (and, indeed, Everyman?the unisex Jokapoika shirts have been hot sellers since 1956). It is perhaps one of the first ever lifestyle brands (the Courier-type logo, which was inspired by a magazine headline, dates from 1954 and has been stamped on clothing and home wares ever since). The company was started in 1951 by textile designer Armi Ratia, whose husband Viljo owned an oilcloth-printing company that was struggling as a result of postwar shortages. Ratia was determined to set about...
...clothing and fabric designer named Vuokko Nurmesniemi, who worked for Marimekko only from 1953 to 1960, who really forged the brand's simple styles and its legacy of distinctive silhouettes, including that of Kennedy's shift. As for the company's eye-popping Tasaraita stripes, these were developed in the '60s by Annika Rimala. The patterns have been designed mainly by freelance artists, the most famous being Maija Isola, who by the time she died in 2001 had created more than 500 prints for Marimekko. She was able to mastermind an astonishing range, from the intricate and folkloric Ananas...
...company fueled by female power (and with a staff of more than 90% women), the poppy print was born when the forceful Armi Ratia told Maija Isola that Marimekko wanted nothing to do with the pretty florals that have been a leitmotif of industrially produced furnishing fabrics ever since the advent of William Morris and Liberty of London. The headstrong Isola responded with a flower print that owes nothing to an English country garden. Though today Unikko adorns everything from shower curtains to cookie tins, when it was introduced, the print seemed to channel the rising wave of '60s discontent...
Erja Hirvi, 39, whose designs have been produced by Marimekko since 1995, says Finns, especially those from the frozen north, are particularly adept at drawing on their imagination. "When I was a child, there were five children in my class, and we lived far from one another," she says. Self-reliant in her life and in art, she says she can now conjure up entire patterns and colorways in her mind...