Tuomas Merikoski seems to have graduated from art-school quirky to a more womanly allure. It suits him. “I guess we have matured a little,” the designer said backstage, by way of explanation. “I wanted to bring something a little easier and smoother, with a touch of elegance.” His model lineup also reflected that attitude: Like several other shows this week, Aalto’s was entirely street-cast.
Since the Finnish word aalto means wave, Merikoski set about reinterpreting that idea in various ways, such as intarsias, appliqué draping, bias cuts, and prints. Some renderings, like the necklines on a white shift dress or suiting, were literal (and most of them worked). But the subtler transpositions were stronger, like the unfinished streamer cascading down the front of a relaxed white linen suit that the designer dubbed “organic freedom tailoring”—an idea he reiterated frequently, on a shiny black miniskirt; a caramel suede vest; and a long, sleeveless gilet in robin’s-egg blue. Speaking of color, two of the season’s majors, royal blue and security-jacket orange, got deft treatment on jackets and pants. The high-waisted washed-out jeans looked cool, too. And a couple of iridescent blouses looked subtler in natural light than they ever could under the glare of a flashbulb. The Aalto woman will get a lot of mileage out of those pieces.
Merikoski also spent a lot some time mulling over womanhood and power, and he decided to push boundaries in more way than one. Power walking—the busy woman’s default mode—would work with the sport shorts shown here. The tipping point came in the final two looks. Swedish artist Joakim Ojanen collaborated with Merikoski on the entire collection, and his screen print motifs expressed what Merikoski called “the essence of power and femininity.” Perhaps the most fearless militants among us will flaunt it for the world to see. But you can get the power point across perfectly well without actually going there.
