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.

Final word of the Hempel Award 2013

In this year's competition helmets and hoods were a trending topic, I would say. In several collections the designer covered the head of the model. Its funny to see how these trends coming out of somewhere are unconsciously followed/interpreted from Canada to China.

In a fashion show "the bigger the better" works well and to achieve a show stopper wide hemlines and extensive use of fabric will help. At first I felt tiny among all those big creations, but finally when seeing my clothes on models I was calm, because I liked what I saw. I liked my designs and the style of them, but I have to admit now being myself there in the competition that I should have exaggerated more. Instead of spending something like 50 euros for ribbons I should have spent 150 euros for them. Instead of focusing to wearability I should have been focusing on to create more a "show stopper" -collection. For some reason I thought the competition would have been more towards industrial collections, but clearly it wasn't.

On the next day of the runaway few members of the jury had a public chat and they explained what they looked after when selecting the winners. The clothes had to be well made (I was a bit surprised of this), they should be wearable (good, good!), not too industrial or realistic, but also not too absurd either. They also sought after innovation of some sort. The winners this year had innovation in material, combination of material (plastic and fabric) and then two collections had used leather in a bit new way. I really appreciate that afterwards we received some kind of feedback of what was good and what could be improved and finally I was also happy that I hadn't put any helmets on my models heads. Too big isn't good either.

Below I attach photos of my clothes, few making ofs and some pics of my favorite collections.

Models getting their make up

Rehearsal (stage is still covered with a carpet), I was competitor nro 20

The front texture of the trousers turned out well.

When sewing the clothes the black dress with its ribbon details was actually my favorite, but then on stage the dress looked really tiny and you really couldn't see or appreciate the black ribbon details.

Lights off and models out of stage.

Nro 7 Tania Dasilva from Canada with this simple but well coordinated wool clothes. 

Adorable feathers and beautifully textured fabrics from Nro 25 Maya Guerrero Rivas from El Salvador (and who is studying here in Barcelona in Felicidad Duce).

A prototype of my skirt, having a bigger flower than finally on the runaway.

Needlepoint belt getting its stitches.

Ribbons, ribbons, ribbons...

Post feelings of Hempel Award

I am back from China. I have already been few weeks in Barcelona, but only this week I have finally recovered from the trip. At the end of my stay in Beijing I catched a flu and have been sneezing ever since. Now I start to feel fine.

I enjoyed the competition. It was well organized, with professional staff for the catwalk, really nice. We were all together 29 competitors from various countries. The collections were fantasies, more or less industrial, mine was (too) industrial, and then there were something in between. The most innovative collection towards material won. It had used bamboo chips made by using porcelain technology. I have nothing to add to that. The winning clothes had even their "bodyguards" during the stay there. Impressive.

Most winners were from Asia region, only a shared 2nd price winner was from Germany. In a way I can understand that as this competition seems to have much bigger hype and reputation in Asia, which is completely normal. Hempel International Group is a huge and well known brand there.

The theme for this year was "Boundary" - How should those fashion editors dress up themselves when they go to fashion shows.

Here I put some of the winning collections to see.

The winner Wang Zhixian with her winning collection (photo courtesy of prcservice.com)

German Christina Sieber's collection "Motocross" shared the Silver Prize. This was also my favorite collection.

Korean Park Min-Seon's collection "Connections" shared the Silver prize (photo courtesy of english.cri.cn). I also liked this one, except the colors reminded me too much of Formula1.

Susi Sweet Dress today

Everyone who is in Barcelona today should visit the Susi Sweet Dress vintage style -clothes fair in Gracia.

Susanna Bas, the creator of Susi Sweet Dress street market event, is an actress who in her trips to abroad bought pretty dresses that her friends loved. After "taking orders" to buy vintage dresses from her travels to her friends, step by step the concept of "Susi Sweet Dress" was born. Now twice a year she organizes the vintage style clothes street market where you can find dresses, skirts, shirts and accessories and this event is today.

In every edition there is a collaborator Illustrator and this time she is the Illustrator  Joana Santamans. I hope I have time to pass by the street market today, last time in October I bought one dress with really pretty fabric, origin from Japan as the etiquette was in Japanese. Spring is coming and soon starts the "no jeans" -epoch for me, so new dresses are more than welcome.

The event is in Rambla del Prat 27, in Gracia near the metro station Fontana.

New acquaintance to "Made in Spain" brands

In January I panicked when searching for shoes to the Hempel Award Fashion Show. As my clothes have a neutral color palette; beige/black/cream the shoes need to be red, bordeaux red if possible. Going around on sales I passed "expensive shoes" section in El Corte Inglés and there they were; patent leather bordeaux red high heels. I thought they were too expensive for me to buy for the show, but the sale was - 50% and the shoes were "Made in Spain" so they started to be tempting.

Panic came few days later, the idea of me running around Barcelona and not finding red shoes week before the trip to Beijing so I rushed back to El Corte Inglés and bought 3 pairs of L.K. Bennett shoes in the sizes they still had (38, 39, 40). They were not cheap, but they are perfect red colored, good quality and "Made in Spain". I will keep the 38 to me and the sizes 39 and 40 I will put on sale to eBay or something, that is the idea. So if you would like to have these shoes they will be later in April on sale.

L.K. Bennett Shilo Bordeaux patent Leather shoes

I didn't knew the brand L.K. Bennett before, a London based shoe&clothing brand. The clothes don't draw my attention, but the shoes are brilliant. They have a classical nude and black high hells with several option for the  heel hight (flat, kitten and stiletto), these are so called conservative but chic shoes and then they have more extravagant collection. And what is really important is that the shoes are "Made in Spain".

In February L.K. Bennett launched a collection in collaboration with Caroline Issa, Tank magazine director. Both unknown names for me; Caroline Issa and Tank magazine, but I don't mind as the shoes were amazing. As I love folklore, these folklorish Thai inspired embroidered shoes with pom-poms are hilarious. Very stylish, youthful and colorful limited edition collection. I also have learned now that Caroline Issa is "the ultra chic Fashion Director of London based avant-garde style bible Tank" and at the moment one of the street's styles biggest stars.

Caroline Issa and her creations