The show’s title, Finlaand (reprising the two a’s in Aalto), and its models hold the key to Tuomas Merikoski’s thinking these days just as much as the clothes.
“It’s a whole new chapter for me,” the designer explained backstage before the show. “We’re really breaking rules and breaking free of standards when it comes to people and beauty. I believe you can be whatever you want to be; what inspires me is inner beauty.”
Hence a street-cast lineup of friends, friends of friends, and others from Helsinki, and rise to the occasion they did. Adjacent to the show space, the designer also presented his latest artistic collaboration, a video installation by Karim Rahman and Johan Sandberg that questioned beauty-related clichés through a “universal language” of tribal—dare one say superhero?—makeup combinations.
For Merikoski, reinvention means diversity, plurality, and a cultural and spiritual collision of all manner of things. But it also implies looking to brave new worlds IRL: An edit of his accessories, such as custom berets by Le Beret Français, launched simultaneously today at Galeries Lafayette.
Contrast being the baseline for his Fall collection, Merikoski folded together some of the season’s biggest trends—namely tailoring, bold checks, and spliced-together materials—with notions about “modest wear.” That did not always work: A few models looked like they were being swallowed up by their clothes, and an allover Op Art wave can be a little dizzy-making.
But when Merikoski pulled it off—as he did with a black shearling day coat with plaid inserts, well-cut wide-legged pants, a glossy black jacket, a recycled-down puffer, and a handful of organic wool knits by the Gotland-based Swedish company Knitology—he proved that, in these maximalist times, exercising a bit of restraint can go a long way.
