Fashion in Helsinki 2026
Some fashion weeks sell an image. Helsinki sells a position. We were invited to take part in Fashion in Helsinki, and over a few days we moved through local brands, art galleries, ateliers and showrooms, finding a city where innovation runs next to a real attention to craftsmanship and tradition, and where both point in the same direction: forward. Eleven young designers showed on Seurasaari Island, the National Museum's open-air site, with historical Finnish architecture and the sea as scenography. The rest of the week filled in the picture, room by room, and the picture was good.
Aalto University
The students of Aalto presented their collections with the assurance of professionals. The university, a public research institution established in 2010 in Espoo, has become internationally known for joining science, art, business and technology in one curriculum, and the graduate work made it obvious why so many of the strongest names in new Finnish fashion start here. The collections carried research where others carry references, and the level of construction would embarrass plenty of working labels. Schools like to claim they produce the future. Aalto can point to the evidence.
““A new generation of designers is returning fashion to its origin. Supporting them means means access, education and a market that values the hand behind the garment.””
The Selfie Project
The selfie project comes under the art direction of photographer Joonas S'diri. Here the camera changes hands: each model frames their own image, free of an outside eye, and what emerges on film is the moment as they lived it, unposed and personal.
Marimekko
Marimekko, 75 years old this year, opened its headquarters and production departments to us. We watched the work happen in real time, a rare look at process inside a house of this scale: print tables, color tests, archive rooms where seven decades of pattern sit ready for reuse. We also got an early sense of the new collaborations in preparation, projects the house keeps close for now. Days earlier, Marimekko Day had opened the Esplanadi Park to the general public, the anniversary treated as a civic occasion rather than a marketing one. The visit confirmed something simple: heritage means very little unless production stays close to the idea.
Paloceras
At the showroom and atelier of Paloceras, the independent European eyewear brand founded in 2022 by Finnish designer Mika Matikainen and Canadian designer Alexis Perron-Corriveau, we found a high-end design studio dedicated to rethinking eyewear from first principles. The founders met at art school in Switzerland and brought that training with them: every frame is treated as a small architecture, designed, prototyped and finished with the patience of object design. The brand left the Finnish Fashion Awards with the Branding prize, and a single afternoon among the frames made the verdict feel inevitable.
VAIN
VAIN, which stocked copies of our Issue 1, gave us time in their store and workspace. The interdisciplinary label founded by artist and creative director Jimi Vain and CEO Roope Reinola works in limited drops and recovered materials, and reads as much as a cultural project as a fashion one. Music runs through everything the label does, and the store doubles as a gathering point for the scene around it. Among the new Finnish labels, it may be the one with the clearest voice, and the one that best understands that a brand today is a community before it is a product.
The talk
Albert Shyong of A Magazine Curated By hosted a panel with Alain Paul, the Paris-based label founded in 2023 by designer Alain Paul and his husband Luis Philippe, in conversation with Taylore Scarabelli and Alexis Djouahra. Independence, scale, survival: the questions every young house faces, discussed by people answering them in practice rather than in theory. Paul, who built his label with his husband after years inside the system, spoke with the precision of someone who has counted the real costs. The room stayed full to the last word.
Juha Vehmaanperä
We spent time with Juha Vehmaanperä, Finnish knitwear designer, Aalto graduate, based in Helsinki. His practice moves between slow fashion, queer theory and craft, and his Craft Punk exhibition at the Architecture and Design Museum gives that practice institutional weight. Knitwear, in his hands, becomes a way of thinking: about time, about labor, about who gets to make things and why. In a week full of strong work, his was the practice we kept returning to in conversation afterward.
Finnish Fashion Awards
The closing night belonged to the Finnish Fashion Awards. Heikki Salonen, fresh from his appointment as the first Creative Director of Salomon after twelve years leading MM6 Maison Margiela, took Designer of the Year, the prize finding one of the most significant Finnish careers in international fashion at exactly the right moment. Anni Salonen won New Talent, Paloceras won Branding, and the inaugural Vuokko Lifetime Award honored Vuokko Nurmesniemi, the designer who helped define Finnish fashion in the first place and whose name the award will now carry. Ten categories, one message: the field is in good hands.
““The most radical gesture in fashion today is patience. Helsinki understands this: put craft at the heart of the discipline, give young designers the time and the tools to master it, and the future arrives better made.” ”
Helsinki
Helsinki gave us its best across innovation, fashion, music and food, experimental wherever it could be and openly invested in younger generations, which matters now more than ever. All of it set in an environment of remarkable natural beauty, sea on one side, forest on the other, the city calm in between. Few places make the future feel this incredible, we really enjoyed every single moment and we are extremely gratitude for the beautiful experience.
Words by Donald Gjoka
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