The Finnish phenomenon: Explore 3 Helsinki brands on the front lines of fashion

The pre-show murmurs reverberate in the Florentine palazzo, echoing between the marble stuccos and Renaissance paintings. Emerging into the spotlight, wearing a flowing blonde wig and a sultry red outfit of lace and fringe with scarlet stockings to match, Finnish designer Ervin Latimer introduces his just-launched brand Latimmier’s debut show in full drag, his energetic descriptions of each look on par with the most talented MCs in the ballroom scene.

Latimmier ’s debut at Pitti Uomo in early 2022 scored the brand a top-listed feature in The New York Times style section, a “first for any Finnish brand,” as Latimer points out. The label has since become a noteworthy player on Copenhagen Fashion Week’s schedule, garnering more attention with the international press with each passing season. With a singular aesthetic that dissects traditionally masculine silhouettes, Latimer has found a dedicated fanbase in “anyone who wants to express masculinity with their clothing”. Take the brand’s latest collection as a prime example: the relaxed, deconstructed tailoring, rendered in “masculine” fabrics like wool and leather juxtaposed with buttery cobalt blue trousers and Oxford shirts worn without bottoms.

That first show in Florence marked a shift in Finnish fashion. Latimmier’s international success shone a spotlight on Helsinki’s burgeoning scene with an array of fascinating Finnish designers following in its wake. Yes, Finland has an assertive aesthetic past by way of Alvar Aalto’s furniture and the almighty power of Marimekko. However, the country’s knack for design was in hibernation for most of the late 20th century, its creative prowess bubbling just below the surface.

Remotely located and significantly less populated than, say Paris or Milan, Helsinki isn’t exactly poised in any practical way to be a thriving fashion hub. Factories and producers are inaccessible and the once-thriving Finnish textile industry was damaged by the fall of the Soviet Union. “[The USSR] was a very important market for Finnish textile companies and factories,” says Martta Louekari, a Finnish communication director at Juni PR and one of the founders behind Fashion in Helsinki, a yearly fashion event focusing on Finnish talent and innovation.

As a result, Finland’s fashion scene suffered. "We don’t have the same industry, we don’t have the same system,” continues Louekari. “We don’t have those big companies for young designers to go to – beyond Marimekko, of course.” Yet it’s a situation she believes fosters the free-thinking fashion now emerging from Finland – exploding onto the scene with uninhibited, visionary innovation.

Related: Print power: How Maija Isola grew Marimekko into a cult brand

Over the past few years, Louekari has emerged as one of the most vocal champions of contemporary Finnish fashion, particularly abroad. If you just launch a brand in Finland, “nobody cares,” she says. So, ever since Finland was the guest nation at Florence’s Pitti Uomo in 2018, Louekari has been taking fledgling Finnish designers to Italy. In order for a Finnish brand to succeed, she says, it “needs to be related to something and be part of a bigger story”. As Latimmier ’s breakout success has shown, Pitti Uomo has offered that “bigger story” to young Finnish talent.

As he puts it, Latimer designs for “anyone who wants to express masculinity with their clothing”. When I reach the designer via Zoom, he’s sitting in the brand’s first-ever pop-up shop in Helsinki, sparsely decorated with terracotta tile flooring and the occasional burst of a Klein blue scribbled objet placed just-so among the rails. “It’s really nice to see the sort of positive reactions that people have when they actually get to touch the clothes,” Latimer notes as he gives me a virtual tour of the space.

When asked why he chose to pursue fashion, Latimer laughs and replies, “How far back do you want to go?” Towering at 190 centimetres, he was “supposed to be a professional basketball player”, but in high school, an interest in art, and then fashion specifically, came calling. So he applied for a master ’s degree at Helsinki’s lauded design school, Aalto University. The year was 2015 and Aalto alumni had started making names for themselves, sweeping awards at design competitions in Finland and abroad.

“Aalto has been the womb for the new way of Finnish fashion,” says Kirsi Niinimäki, an associate professor at the university. It’s a belief shared by Louekari: “Back then, the students got really good internships in big fashion houses and also started to win a lot of competitions, which continues today and hopefully will in the future as well.” What sets Aalto apart from other design schools is the amalgamation of different fields; the programme tightly connects textile creation with fashion design – a multidisciplinary tradition seen throughout Finland’s fashion heritage. “There has been a strong ethos to find new paths, supporting students’ creative growth, but also teaching strong technical skills,’’ says Niinimäki.

After graduating in 2018, Latimer quickly garnered attention from the industry, landing a spot in the finals of the H&M Design Award. He was soon headhunted to intern at Italian luxury label Alyx, and later scouted to work as the design manager at Heliot Emil in Copenhagen. When the pandemic struck, however, it all became too much for Latimer. “I went home to rest up and I realised it was my last chance to apply for the Young Designer of the Year award,” he says, speaking of the grant for emerging designers issued by Design Forum Finland. He applied, and won, something he says he is immensely thankful for. ”You could work a year and a half, you could work five years without anyone recognising or noticing your work.” He acknowledges that his current level of success is inextricably bound up with the support of those around him. “Like Martta,” he says, noting her involvement with his debut show at Pitti Uomo.

As for why we’re currently seeing a wave of Finnish talent with a fresh perspective, Latimer echoes Louekari’s sentiment, pinpointing the lack of a broad, established fashion industry as helping spark the movement. “I think us being here, kind of in the back corner of Europe, and not having the security of our own market, it pushes us to really consider why we’re doing what we’re doing and what really makes us different,” he says. “You really have to make sure that it is special,” he adds. Latimer is exemplary in this. “He’s really good when it comes to talking about difficult topics,” says Louekari, referencing Latimer’s work with marginalised groups in the Nordics. The designer has written and lectured on the intersection of queer culture, anti-racism, masculinity and fashion, where he challenges the concept of traditionally masculine clothing, especially within marginalised communities.

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Working outside of any “systems”, as Louekari describes it, Finnish designers like Latimer have the freedom to explore unconfined personal expression. “There’s no preemptive mould if that makes sense?” he says, all while pointing out how much he values Finland’s strong design history, saying that “being a designer from Finland makes perfect sense.” But in Finland, commercialism is secondary to individualism. “There is that natural will to proactively make space for something new,” he says. And for Latimer, it is about making space for people who may not fit the “traditional” notion of Nordicism, “to expand the idea of who is Nordic,” as he describes it.

Niinimäki highlights this fearlessness as a cultural factor guiding all budding Finnish designers. “I think that Finnish designers do not ‘bow down to the image,’” she says. “Even if they admire some designer or style, they are able to create their own look and fashion message, their own statement. Very often their fashion might not be so commercial, but this also gives freedom for expression.”

Of course, this is all very well, but original ideas can only get you so far. Latimer points out that the new wave of Finnish designers are also united by “this almost old-fashioned idea of good design and good quality,” an intrinsically Nordic sense of practicality and wearability. This Finnish functionality is especially evident in Sofia Ilmonen’s modular designs. While her dresses appear plucked from the pages of a John Bauer fairytale illustration – with their frills, buttons and bows – they are all exclusively made up of fabric squares, strings and fastenings. “Like Lego pieces,” she says of the way that each square of fabric – “four different types of modules, all with the same attachment system” – is intricately linked together. “It’s really quite technical,” she adds.

Despite her insistence that her brand is “not necessarily cool,” any suggestion that Ilmonen’s technical prowess somehow leads to dry, uninspiring designs is banished by a quick glance at her collections. A selection of her dresses hang on a rainbow-coloured rail behind her while we speak, transforming her Helsinki studio into a sartorial candy shop.

Ilmonen calls her background “cliché.” “I used to make dresses for my Barbie dolls and then gradually started sewing my own clothes,” she says. Growing up in a small town in northern Finland, she says the fashion industry seemed like an alien world when she was a child. However, after high school, a vocational course in clothing construction put her on the path towards fashion design, leading to 10 years in London, where she interned, worked and studied – completing a bachelor’s degree at London College of Fashion.

During her last three years in London, Ilmonen worked at Alexander McQueen – “an amazing opportunity,” she says. As a seamstress at the brand’s headquarters, she was part of the designing, pattern-cutting and clothing construction team. Known for his immaculate eye for detail, some of McQueen’s spirit has seeped into Ilmonen’s work. “The kind of refinement or maybe the techniques,” she notes. “It doesn’t matter how long it takes, but if you want a certain look, you will spend the time, whatever it takes.”

Feeling homesick, Ilmonen decided to pursue a master ’s degree in 2018 at – where else? – Aalto. “When doing a masters, [Aalto] expects you to already have a voice, and they also push you to pursue academic research,” she says, strengthening the argument that academia is integral to the current Finnish fashion scene. “Frustrated and bored” with the “system” in London, Ilmonen was excited to explore how to do things differently. “I didn’t have any idea of modular design when I started my studies,” she says. “Then I read some articles about the sustainable possibilities of transformable fashion.”

It was the starting point for her eponymous brand. “I wasn’t thinking about the commercial side of the concept,” she says, echoing Latimer’s argument for artistic expression over commercialism. Instead, Ilmonen’s driving force was a creative and academic approach to sustainable, circular design.

According to Ilmonen, her brand is “not necessarily cool.” Instead, her folkloric, feminine fashion has a “different kind of approach.” “There’s still some edge to it, I guess, which comes from the technique, which underscores individualism in a very literal sense. Namely, the adjustable elements offer a “modern way to tailor to your client without actually having to go through all the fittings.” “I usually say our garments fit anyone between size 34 to 44, depending on how they’re gathered,” says Ilmonen. “So you don’t need to think about the size or the number too much.” Size inclusivity is quickly becoming more and more important for the designer. “As an ‘80s kid, it’s a no-brainer,” she says. “Back then, we had strict beauty standards. I’m super happy to see that it’s changing now.”

Related: Ervin Latimer is doing things differently

As for helming her own fashion brand in Finland, Ilmonen shares Latimer ’s perspective. “In Finland, there’s been a bit of a struggle because there aren’t any big platforms,” she says. “You have to do everything by yourself.” Even so, she has noticed a significant shift in the Finnish fashion industry. “I think bigger companies are starting to get the idea that this is something worth supporting and investing in.”

But it isn’t just niche creativity and a world-class design school that’s led to Helsinki’s resurgence. What Finland lacks in traditional fashion infrastructure, it makes up for in material innovations – a forward-thinking approach that has led to a reinvigoration of Finland’s textile industry. “We don’t have such a strong and long history in textile, fashion, or design,” Niinimäki says. “Therefore, we tend to look more into the future than the past.”

Take, for instance, the fibre innovations coming out of Finland. Fluff Stuff (which produces climate-positive fillings for jackets and furnishings from decaying plants) and Spinnova (which makes textile fibres from waste) are both forging a future in Finnish textile and material production.

One designer particularly interested in reinvigorating Finland’s textile heritage is Jonathan Ingberg, founder of By Hinders. It’s an interest that fits neatly alongside his personal background: Ingberg has shaped his entire brand, even its name, around his parents’ sheep farm, Hinders Gård (Hinder’s Farm), based on the Helsinki archipelago.

Ingberg’s introduction to the fashion industry was via a different sort of Aalto connection: he worked there as a model in his teens. The experience helped him realise that he could “actually study design”. He decided to head to Central Saint Martins, first completing a vocational course and then pursuing a university degree at the famed fashion school. Ingberg describes his London experience as tumultuous. “I was catching up a lot,” he says. “When I went to Central Saint Martins, I felt so normal, you know? Everyone was so avant-garde and interesting, and I just felt so regular.”

As a result, Ingberg tried to be something he wasn’t. “All of my projects in the first year got such bad feedback, and nothing really seemed to work,” he says. But a summer spent back on the family farm helped him realise the wealth of his own heritage – his unique point of view. “I kind of started reflecting a lot on my upbringing and my background,” he says. He found his spark working with Finnish sheep wool, realising the value of local materials.

After working in Paris and Stockholm, when the pandemic struck, Ingberg found himself heading home to figure out his next steps. “I went back into my graduate collection,” he says – a collection based on Finland in the 1940s and the material shortage during wartime. “It felt somehow current at that time.” Those original aesthetics still permeate Ingberg’s designs today with notions of elevated workwear, be it in transformable chinos with button details, a woollen grey jumpsuit or a military green unisex trench coat.

With the help of government grants, Ingberg launched his unisex brand in 2020. “By Hinders, for me, was this study on how to make a conscious or low-impact, locally produced fashion label,” he says. “If that’s even possible.” During his research period ahead of the brand launch, Ingberg was particularly distraught to discover that 60 per cent of local wool ends up in landfills. What’s more, even though Finnish wool has “similar qualities to Merino”, local brands imported fibres from abroad. “It didn’t make sense to me,” he says. Especially when considering the chain reaction treasuring local materials would have. Using locally sourced materials, he points out, “could improve the Finnish textile industry, not to mention agriculture.”

Ingberg believes he had to leave Finland to truly be able to treasure it. “As soon as I went abroad, I realised how valuable my heritage is and how many stories there are to tell here,” he says. “There’s so much talent and wealth. But nothing changes if everyone leaves and no one does anything about it.”

By Hinders’ ethos resonates with a post-Covid perspective, where a new wave of locality is celebrated. It is a characteristic that Niinimäki believes will set Finnish fashion apart in the future, noting how “different kinds of business models, which are not based on mass-manufacturing but emphasise local, small scale production and services towards consumers,” are the way to go. Where, for example, re discovered traditions like Finnish sheep wool pave the path to the future. “The story of By Hinders is actually similar to Finland’s entire design story,” says Louekari, highlighting Ingberg’s work for making “the maximum out of minimum resources.”

Related: How one couple, 80 grannies and a flock of sheep are changing the face of sustainability

According to Louekari, the one factor uniting Latimmier, By Hinders, and Sofia Ilmonen – and the rest of the Finnish fashion scene, for that matter – is that each brand has a crystal clear point of view, often developed during the designers’ respective studies. Be it Latimer’s exploration of the feminine and masculine, Ilmonen’s modular, adjustable approach, or Ingberg’s fascination with heritage, they have all developed their aesthetics around a distinct thesis, an academic way of thinking. “That’s because of the education; that’s because of how the universities are helping students to identify their thing,” says Louekari.

All three designers share hopes for making the future easier for young, up-and-coming Finnish creators. “I hope that it evolves so that younger designers can create a business for themselves,” says Latimer, adding that he wants them to know that it’s OK to stay niche. “Not everyone needs to, and not everyone should, make a million-dollar brand.” Ilmonen agrees, noting that the future of Finnish fashion depends on the platform she and her fellow creatives are constructing, “so that everything wouldn’t have to be built from scratch”. Latimer describes it as a “domino effect of support”, with each designer standing on their predecessor’s shoulders. He hopes that someday someone else can stand on his. As he puts it, “Everyone wins if any one of us succeeds.”