Garments in Landscape by Satu Maaranen

Inspiring news; Satu Maaranen, fashion designer graduated from Aalto University, Finland has won this years Hyères Fashion Festival held in France. I had never heard about the competition, but apparently it is pretty appreciated in fashion scene. Job guaranteed if you even get to the final, not to mention winning the event.

Nice to hear a Finn has won an international competition and when I saw the clothes I surely understand why she was so successful. The clothes are gorgeous! Really beautiful color surfaces - landscapes as the designer's inspiration was. I am so happy that finally there is a young designer from Finland who uses colors, lots of colors in her clothes and that the clothes have a form and are not too shapeless! There a many appraised young designer's in Finland of course, but they all are pretty dull with the color palette (black, grey...) and really there has been none that I would like or even would understand why the mark would be appraised.

Satu Maaranen has been already collaborating with Marimekko during few years and this year's Spring/summer collection also includes clothes designed by her.

Congratulations for the prize and hopefully she doesn't completely vanish from Finland's clothing scene to the international markets!

Satu Maaranen with the clothes of her winning collection (photo; Sirpa Räihä, HS)

Photos from the catwalk of Hyères Fashion Festival (courtesy of Vogue Italy)

A print by Satu Maaranen and a dress from it, old season of Marimekko

Dresses by Satu Maaranen, S/S 2013 Marimekko

Rainy weeks

Sunny spring didn't last long, we are back to the cloudy rainy weather. Good time to have a glimpse to rubber boots/wellingtons on the market.

Hunter has this year lovely colors; I love the gloss mint boots. My first acquaintance to the brand Hunter came in 2010 when visiting New York. We travelled in March and it happened to be really rainy week in NY and all ladies, well almost all in the Manhattan, were wearing Hunters. And they looked great and surely kept the feet dry and warm. I almost bought a pair to me, but as the price was pretty high decided to fill up my luggage with some other stuff. Since then every year I check out the new colors and if they would have lowered the prices. Until now, nope, although the production has been moved partially to the Far East to lower the production costs. From 1856 until 2008 these iconic British boots were manufactured in Edinburgh. It is such a pity that so many successful brands can see as the only option to transfer the production to the Asia region.

A curiosity is that Hunter was also the manufacturer of the wellingtons for the army in the World War I and II. Wow. That must have been many, many boots.

This spring's new gloss colors, works well in the short model

Everyone surely finds a color they like from this selection

My Marimekko's "Suomu" rubber boots and these are made in ITALY!!!! Good stuff. 

I like the narrow design with high heels and leather detail on the upper part of the boot.

In 1960's Annika Rimala designed a print "Pikku Suomu" and 

it can be still found on this years spring collection of Marimekko. 

Marimekko always recycles classics in its collections.

Spring has arrived, again

Hopefully now it stays, as I am about to update my closet from winter to spring/summer clothes. Now would be a perfect time to make an inventory of what clothes I have, which ones I don't use etc. I'm not worried about the amount of textiles there is, I never have considered myself as a shopaholic, but to have an order and update of what I own. I am not going to follow any principles of limiting the amount of clothes, though might be interesting.

Hmmm, now when writing about it might be worth of trying the Project 333. From the blog Pitsikirja - a lace diary I learned about the Project 333 that is "a minimalist fashion challenge that invites you to dress with 33 items or less for 3 months". As a curiosity I could count my clothes to verify whether the amount of them is extensive, although I think not. Will see..

Well, for the first time the inventory came to my mind when I received a Moleskine Style Journal as a gift. First I thought what I should do with that, but now when having it it starts to be very useful. For example you can list all the sizes of your family&friends in order to know the right size of each brand when buying presents. One would avoid the stupid "what's your size" -calls. At the end very practical.

As a listing lover this kind of journal might work well, to have all stylish things under one covers.

As the Moleskine calendars this book also has stickers to point out different pages. Things to list on these pages would be favority Etsy -shops, vintage -shops in Barcelona etc. 

Another inventory would be to clear up all the piles of magazines, articles ripped off from different leaflets etc. and maybe, just maybe gather only the "important&useful" things up to the Style Journal.