Turan Alex

FloraJuliana · Dołączył: 26 Maj 2022 Posty: 3

Ratia (née Airaksinen) was jeans for women born in 1912 in Karelia, a province of Finland near to Russia. She studied textile design at the Central School of Applied Arts, Helsinki, graduating in 1935. That year, she married Viljo Ratia, a soldier, and opened her own weaving workshop soon afterwards in Viipuri, then capital of Karelia. As a student, she was hugely influenced by avant-garde German design school the Bauhaus, a life-long passion evidenced by the presence of a photo of its founder Walter Gropius in her office. As US design critic Jane Holtz Kay noted in a story on Marimekko in The Boston Globe in 1974: "There behind the broad desk and cascading daisies in a glass bowl. Beneath the photo of Gropius, she sits. The indomitable woman who created what must be the world's largest source of design excellence in cloth, personifies a lifestyle at once casual and total."

Resettling in Helsinki, Ratia worked as a copywriter for an ad amiri jeans agency, presaging her flair for publicity. "After the war, young men and women wanted to rebuild Finland," says Borrelli-Persson. "Armi was free-spirited, and rejected notions of class and traditional gender roles." On leaving the military, Viljo bought an oilcloth factory called Printex, which went bankrupt soon after. Armi joined the company in bell bottom jeans 1949 and two years later she and Viljo co-founded textiles firm Marimekko. It was launched with a fashion show at Helsinki's Kalastajatorppa Hotel. Meaning "Mary's dress" in Finnish, the name Marimekko had a universal ring to it.

More specifically, in postwar Finland there was a desire for innovation and optimism, and Marimekko was at the vanguard of this. "The brand's raison d être from the start was to empower people to feel joy, which really resonated when national morale was low," says Kemell-Kutvonen. This happened to dovetail, she adds, with a particularly Finnish type of stoicism sisu, meaning perseverance in the face of adversity. Moreover, wrangler jeans Marimekko textiles, also adopted as furnishing fabrics in the home, helped to combat the gloom of Finland's long, dark winters.

Forced to pay reparations to Russia, the country was desperately short of resources, and Marimekko's use of low-cost, utilitarian cotton reflected this. In 1953, Ratia hired young designer Vuokko Eskolin-Nurmesniemi, who created the charmingly hand-drawn, pinstripe-like Piccolo print. This found its way onto the Jokapoika shirt the brand's first men's garment, based on Finnish farmers' shirts, but soon co-opted by women and loose-fitting dresses also designed by Eskolin-Nurmesniemi. These offered an appealingly comfortable alternative to the restrictive, wasp-waisted silhouette of the 1950s.

Although Marimekko flourished in circumstances peculiar to Finland, its appeal soon extended far beyond its borders, thanks mainly to links Ratia forged with the US. In 1954, Marimekko participated in the Design in Scandinavia exhibition that toured America and was represented in the Tenth Milan Triennial. It also took part in the Eleventh Milan Triennial in 1957. In 1958, Marimekko clothing was well-received in Sweden when Artek, the design firm co-founded by Alvar and his first wife, Aino Aalto, exhibited it in a gallery in Stockholm.But a major breakthrough came when Marimekko exhibited at the World's Fair in Brussels in the same year. One of its restaurants was designed by black jeans Wirkkala who decorated its walls with Marimekko fabrics by Eskolin-Nurmesniemi. He also chose Marimekko dresses for the waitresses. Dubbed "anti-uniforms", these were also sported by the fair's tour guides.

Marimekko was extensively promoted in the US by DR, which opened shops in New York and San Francisco in 1963 and 1964 respectively. Both stocked Marimekko fabrics and clothing popular with its forward-thinking customers. By the 1970s, Marimekko was stocked by 50 retailers in the US. Crate & Barrel, the US chain of homeware shops, which opened its first store in Chicago [img]https://www.argo-holidays.com/images/a/black jeans-352qnn.jpg[/img] in the then-bohemian neighbourhood of Old Town, sold Marimekko fabrics from 1965.