For Fall, Tuomas Merikoski continued to explore his Finnish origins and the intersection between his roots and the world stage—he is, after all, the only Finnish luxury designer on the international scene.
“I’m scared about what’s happening [in the world], but at the same time, I think my identity is in line with all the contrasts that are out there,” Merikoski observed before his show. “I’m trying to explore the law of the positive,” he offered. If that’s the goal, then Love Records sounds like a good enough place to start.
Love Records is a real-life alternative record label from the late 1960s, and Aalto made use of the original logo artwork (those saucy hearts cropped up on a few tops). But he also wanted to bring in what he called the “crazy Finnish secret side,” which means a love steeped in mystery and oddity that’s intrinsic to Merikoski’s pagan roots, as he put it. Closer to our times, the designer has lately become taken with genre-busting works in the fantastical literary current known as Finnish Weird. “They mix fantasy and reality. There’s movement in that,” he said. “It reflects the world as I see it: It’s super anchored in reality, but the part you can’t control has to be there.” (Anyone looking for a crash course in the subject should add Johanna Sinisalo’s Troll: A Love Story to their reading list, he noted.)
Fashion-wise, that translated into a plaid coat with one exaggerated sleeve in mohair, or maybe a suit made of different kinds of plaid, and, in any case, lots of asymmetrical hemlines. That opening look was followed by a number of iterations of quilted, padded parka fabric, rethought as a sleeveless dress, for example. Merikoski considers femininity, and therefore color, a major upside in these fraught times, so he incorporated orange and lavender prints as inserts on a checkered dress. Splicing discordant materials together seems to be a trend this season, and it worked here. More straightforward were the lavender dress with shirring up one side, the dove gray satin windbreaker, and the cable-knits in blush, black, or fire-engine red.
Aalto has bigger plans in the works. He’s not ready to get into details, but Finnish Weird and Love Records are in the mix, maybe a little contemporary photography. It could prove a strange trip.
