The rose petal night for Tiia Vanhatapio

If you thought that being a fashion designer is like dancing on roses, you were right. Only that more often it is not dancing on rose petals but on thorns.

Anyway, there are those rose petal moments, too, and for Tiia Vanhatapio one them was last Friday. It was the opening night of her shiny new store in the excellent location at the heart of Helsinki.

Tiia´s wonderful fashion sense reminds me of the sweet and dramatic moments of life. Here you can buy her seductive dresses for the moments you´ll remember forever and her lovely-funny baby clothes. And in the cellar is Kuilu Galleria for art exhibitions, at the moment you can see there the works by Rosa Liksom.

In the opening night Tiia was wearing Skin Sleeve Dress of her AW 11/12 collection and her man Eero Leppänen dark shades to hide his weary eyes. Having the shop ready for the opening night did not leave too many hours for the sleep...

Tiia Vanhatapio Store is in the newly renovated Kiseleff house, Unioninkatu 27 B, 00100 Helsinki. Open Monday-Friday 11-19, Saturday 11-17.

www.vanhatapio.fi

Cassiopeia Dress and Mamie Short Sleeved Bolero 
from Tiia´s SS11 Druides Collection. 

Photo by Nina Merikallio.

Let´s celebrate new Finnish Young Designers!

The Young Designer of the Year Prize 2011 was today awarded to Laura Laine and Heikki Salonen, who both got 2500 euros and a tiny exhibition in the cellar of Design Forum Finland. It was great to notice that in Finland fashion is not a dirty word but is at last getting the attention it should have deserved ages ago.

Ladies first – designer Laura Laine has an astonishing career as an illustrator whose work is seen not only in Finland but also abroad. Her signature way of drawing looks like a stylish tornado had visited a A3 size white paper - the hair and clothing of the girls are in a constant movement and all the girls have a mile long legs. (Needless to say: so has Laura herself, too.) 

Heikki Salonen is now the creative director of Italian Diesel´s women´s wear, but at the same time he works with his own label as well. Ethical, ecological, inspiring challences – these are the qualities he wants to realise in his work. So goodbye rapid seasons of cheap so-called fashion and welcome interesting well-made collections by Heikki! (You can see some them in Helsinki 10 concept shop.) And we welcome Heikki as well: after many years abroad he has now a new home in Helsinki.

Young Designer of the Year 2011 exhibition is open daily until 18th September 2011 in Design Forum Finland, Erottajankatu 7, Helsinki.

www.designforum.fi/youngdesigner

The tender eyes of Hannah Modigh

Hannah Modigh: A snake in the car.

Who would have thought that this pretty, pocket-size Swedish photographer Hannah Modigh has guts to go to places that are both dark, desperate  and dangerous. And capture the beauty in them.

The months she spent 2006 in the small coal mining town St. Charles in Virginia, USA, photographing people and their poverty resulted a book Hillbilly Heroin, Honey that won last year Svenska Fotobokspriset, award given to the best Swedish Photobook. 

Now a limited selection of those pictures are to be seen in Helsinki. But buy the book, if you want to see more!

Hannah Modigh: Hillbilly Heroin, Honey in Galleria Luova, Albertinkatu 16, 00120 Helsinki until 19.6.2011. Open Tu-Fri 11-18, Sat-Sun 11-16.

Anish Kapoor, Gulliver in the world of Lilliputians

My one second one picture moment with Anish Kapoor.

Photo © Paula Hietaranta

  You are in a womb waiting. It is painfully hot, wet, dark red there. You lose the sense of time and space. Out, out quickly! Suddenly the rays of sunshine pierce the thick round walls – and a moment later you are born to a world of fresh air, light and human voices.

This was my first impression of Leviathan by Anish Kapoor. But what happened afterwards was even more astonishing – it created in my mind a whole process about art and life. Is that the definition of good art - the process it lives in you afterwards, feeds you, questions you?

When the Indian-born British artist Anish Kapoor was invited to create an oeuvre to Monumenta 2011 to the Nave of Grand Palais in Paris, he wanted to make something gigantic to a gigantic space. It took nine months, the time of human pregnancy, to think and build this unique work he named as Leviathan, the biblical monster.

And believe me - it is not just a material piece. There you have an unique possibility to go to the very essence of being.

Momenta 2011 is open until 23rd of June. If you cannot go there, go at least to this internet page to hear the artist to explain his work:

http://www.monumenta.com/fr/2011/medias/view/27/rencontre-anish-kapoor-et-jean-de-loisy

 

Tapani Kokko, our man in Paris

A part of the sculpture Les hommes meurent en premier, 2010.

 

When going to Mr. Kokko´s exhibition be prepared to meet a world full of emotions, fears, life and death.

It has been said that men cannot give birth, but this does not apply to Tapani Kokko.

If you ever contemplated what it is to be a man, a woman, a liar, a princess or a mortal, kissed by the death, this wooden explosion of rough chain saw forms and bold colours gives answers to them all.

At the opening night the artist was gleaming with happiness. He had been working two years with this exhibition, and here it was.

”Now I am ready to conquer the world”, he said.

And instead of the long formal speeches he decided to open the exhibition on his own way.

”The ship is usually christened by smashing a bottle of champange to her deck. I will open this exhibition with a handprint of tar.”

And so he did.

The exhibition Les Hommes meurent en premier is open until 1.7.2011 at Institut Finlandais, 60 rue des Écoles, 75005 Paris. Open Tu 12-20, Wed-Sat 12-18.

Visit Finland, learn to fly

It was a surprise to meet a Finnish-American photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen deep under ground in Paris. At metro stations are now huge b/w photos by and of Arno with a tiny text: 187.888 LACS, 179.584 ÎLES.

187 888 lakes, 179 584 islands??? Who did count them?

The pictures are part of a new Visit Finland advertising campaign you see in France and Germany this spring. The idea is of course to seduce people to visit Finland, but I did not get the message - Arno´s amazing, true, utterly personal pictures certainly differ from the usual semi-sweet tourist photos but they do not look very inviting.

Of course they give you the idea that in Finland you may meet naked artists on lonely lakesides, but is it enough? I promise you that Finland is much more – just come and find out yourself!

By the way, if you want to see more pictures by Arno go to his new website arno-rafael-minkkinen.com

And if you want to know more about Finland and how it really looks go to

www.visitfinland.com

Karita, our own celebrity designer

To Karita´s sketchbook is glued a piece of kitchen towel – 

it happened to be the only paper available when the inspiration struck. 

Well, there are celebrity designers and celebrities who just tell what they like and then the designers redesign their ideas. You did not really believe that Madonna designed her H&M collection? Even Kate Moss bag collection for Longchamp, I have been told, has better versions of her own vintage bags.

OK, I think that they don´t even pretend to be designers, they just sell their selling power. 
But now we have in Finland a celebrity designer of our own - Karita Tykkä, fashion model and Miss Finland 1997, known for her beauty and self-discipline, has designed her first jewellery pieces for the Finnish manufacturer Oy Tillander Ab.
The nicest thing in her first collection is the mother-child pendant Luca, named after her baby son. It consists of two intertwined golden flat rings you cannot separate, a symbol of the bond of maternity.
When Karita tells about her ideas, willingness to learn more and visits to the Tillander workshops her eyes are sparkling like – yes, diamonds. There is certainly more to come.

To find out more about the jewellery collections hand-made in Finland look at

http://www.tillander.fi/