#3 / Small Talk with Rebekka from Marimekko

So, we are here at the third edition of our small talk conversation and I'm very, very happy to welcome today to our studio Rebecca from Marimaco that I met a month ago, I think more or less in a beautiful setting in a dinner in a warehouse surrounded by wonderful people and really good food and it was a really nice moment and then I turned left and we started talking and it was a really nice conversation. Welcome Rebecca, welcome to Slash. Thank you so much and I really have, it's very rare that you meet someone from a very different part of the world and you actually make it happen within a month. Yes, we make it happen. It's so true that we meet a lot of people and sometimes either we don't see them ever again or it takes a lot of time but it was literally a month. In fact, I think we tried almost immediately the following days to book this because you said you'd be traveling and passing by. So it's really good to have you here with us and as I mentioned offline this is just a very formal conversation where we would like to just know you and Marimaco a little bit more and also share with our team and our friends a little bit about this brand that we have a lot of fans in the studio. Of course, you already met two of them, Marta and Joanna but there's more that we really love the brand. So let's start with that. We know that Marimaco was founded in the 50s, in the early 50s, that it's an iconic brand because of its iconic designs but if you need to explain Marimaco to someone that doesn't know about Marimaco, what is Marimaco? So I think and thank you for this opportunity. I'm happy to talk about Marimaco anytime and you just you know you can stop me when we go into the 50s or whatever. There's a lot to talk about. I think most importantly I think Marimaco is one of the world's first lifestyle brands. We are 73 years this year. We were founded by a woman. She founded Marimaco sort of post world war depression time, really wanted to bring joy to people's lives and she wanted to bring that joy to people's life through bold colors and prints and it came about because her husband bought this oil cloth factory in Helsinki and she was trying to figure out how to use the factory and invited her group of friends. I think she was surrounded by artists and creatives invited them to create artwork for textiles to be printed in the printing well and as much as people loved the fabrics, they didn't know what to do with them so she staged a fashion show and again had her friend create the artwork but also in models of show and the audience literally wanted to buy the dresses of the models so it was never intended to be that Marimaco was never intended to be ready to wear out clothing brand but became that because of that event and that is literally the beginning of my Marimaco means Mary's dress so Mary's dress so Mary is Mary and Mako is dressed so really the also today 73 years later we see the dress as a canvas for a great piece of art and we see the dress as a way of democratizing art. I learned well one of my top reasons now to go back to to Helsinki's of your promise to visit the mill and to see the the place where the magic happens but of the research I did you have a huge collection of those illustrations and the the canvases that are printed correct. We have yeah so we I think two things we have a printing mill in the middle of our headquarters which is pretty unique so we can literally open the door from the design studio and we are in the middle of a factory. We print sort of a little less than a million meters fabric a year and we still to today's screen print. I think a lot of the signatures you see in in my Marimaco fabrics for the real die-hard Marimaco fans they see that we have this collar overlap in all our patterns and that is literally because we have always screen printed and when you move the screen to secure the that we fill in the collar this is like overlap that creates a third collar so you see that in all our patterns. So we have the printing well and then we have an archive of we always say 3,500 prints but I I think we need to count I think we're close to 4,000 because we you know we have prints from all the way from there from the beginning beginning of Marimaco we have a huge body of work from also from the 60s we just one of my favorite my reference we have some designers here in the room when we think screen printing screens we think 60 centimeters. Yeah we have bigger screens and we also have rotary screens so we actually have the I mean the printing mill is is an amazing hop not only for you know production because we do we produce meters but of course the printing mill is also an opportunity for us to try new ways of printing and your methods or new ways of using collar or binders or it's you know I think there's a sort of a science to printing as well so so we pride of self of being thought leaders in the art of printmaking but more and more we're thinking that there's the art and there's the science of printmaking so we have big screens and we still can build screens in in our own printing mill we also have have you can also screen print on a rotary printer so for when we do the bigger quantities then we use rotary printing but we it means that we have a small flatbed that we can use for testing then we have a big flatbed where we can have we have just printed a new print from and from a Swedish artist where we used nine screens it's the first time I have seen actually a print stand with nine screens so you have literally nine individual screens on the flatbed at at any given time we had to build all these paper models to fit them in we can actually not fit nine screens but of course we have people who have worked in the printing well for for decades that then understand how to position so it's literally that each screen creates a layer of collar so when we do nine screens it means that we have nine different colors in a print which is I mean almost unheard of in a in a commercial context so the these these talks that that we have are a mix of two things one is meeting friends and people that we want but also we talk about the theme of the season so every season here at ripo collective so ripo collective is the brand that has a slash fabric and found that you already met and we have this season that we have a theme and usually this theme is to have the people of ripo collective but of the people of Abu Dhabi to grow on a certain subject so last year the season was about why good design is good and we we try to use the classics to to talk about that this year's season theme is craftsmanship and Marimeku is from a country that I appreciate a lot as a place of craftsman and craftswoman and in a way Marimeku is the result of that because when you see those black and white images of them doing the screen printing and the whole process it was a great example of of craftsman how much of that is still currently in the DNA of Marimeku is still you know it's still you still feel that crafts people that yeah I think that the I actually think that's the integrity of the brand there's I think I remember when I rediscovered Marimeku so I'm Danish I've grown up with Marimeku I remember the patterns I cannot remember not not knowing the patterns but we're actually when I rediscovered Marimeku was when I was designing for another brand and I picked up these vintage dresses from a from a vintage fan Florence and I could with my eyes closed I could also feel that it was Marimeku so I think yeah I could just feel that I could feel the print on the fabric I know exactly what it means because the the the way the colors are printed onto the fabric so we're still today in everything we do really you know we're wanting to honor and preserve the craft so the art and craft or the art and craft and science of printmaking so even when we develop new prints today and we do that we have we commissioned our work. We have this artist series where we work with artists too and actually give them a lot of freedom and we'll figure out how to get it done. We have an artist in residency program where we develop prints for the sake of the print still today. And what they all have in common is that all of the prints are sort of honoring this tradition of screen printing, of layering the colors, of also being willing to see the human hand in the print. I think what really makes a marble print is also you see the imperfections of what it means when when human humans do things and things are done with hand. So all of that is something that we are really carefully not preserving because that would make us sound like a museum brand and that's not the intent but that we are continuing to bring with us which is also why I'm talking about the science or the innovation because I think in order to be relevant and meaningful today we also need to continue to sort of evolve what it means to be a thought leader in the art of printmaking. So when we met we met at a Varney event and he invited us and this is El Sinky, you are Danish, creative director of a Finnish company. Just some days ago we had Malin from Spacon here that we also met together. We have been working a lot with Finnish, Danish, Norwegian, not so much with this. I have the feeling that I don't know where that feeling comes from but that there's a kind of revival in the craftsman, the crafts role in design. I think I started being a graphic designer before the computers were used then it evolved to almost only computers and there's a feeling that people are going back to work with their hands and they want to be really good at a certain craft. Is that just the feeling that I have or is something that you think that that is happening in your world? I think it was always part of the Scandinavian design DNA. I think this, you know, form follow functions is also derived from form follows material. So I think the material is a very much part of designing in Scandinavia. I definitely think in the world I live in and of course at Marumiko it is both ready to add bags and accessories. It's also home textiles and home goods. I think what sets us apart is that we still celebrate how things are made and I really think this now in an increasingly digitized world that there's appreciation for their hand. I mean I really, and when I talk about the hand it is that you can see the hand particularly it doesn't feel the hand. So that is something that maybe you have a point. I think maybe even at Marumiko, listen a decade ago maybe we were starting to introduce more digital printed fabrics and we are now going more back to really sort of honoring the integrity of screen printing. Yeah I just remembered that at three days in Copenhagen we met at least a couple of very young carpenters for example and they were like super excited about it's not a kind of you know like oh let's go all the way because they mix the modern and the old they can use a CNC machine and and contemporary tools but but it's it's the celebration you just use the right the perfect expression the celebration of the hand of the work of the hand and I think the screen printing is something that as a graphic designer in my beginnings it was always something that and now we are getting into rezo printing you know and the idea of overlapping the colors and and see what's happening and I think there's definitely an outcome that we can see of that revival if you want. There's a curiosity I have about Marumiko which is we know the fabrics I can imagine there's a lot of designers and when I say designers could be a home designer a lady at home that do their own designs with your fabrics have you seen like like really original creations out of the fabrics that that you I mean I want to say and I'll pardon my language I mean there's a lot of crap out there as well in Marumiko fabric but there's of course a lot of of creativity and and I think more crafty takes on the brand I mean if you go to itsy there's so much there's so much in Marumiko fabric and and everything from people replicating the uniko almost recognizable print into 3D shapes or doing their own garments we often see in we have a peer-to-peer platform called pre-loft we at times pieces pieces sort of surface there that was never designed by us so I think there is you know when you are a brand like Marumiko with a long history and there's a lot of love for the brand of course there's going to be a lot of other individuals take take on the brand. I was checking the videos of of the collections so 24 and a little bit of the before how much of the so the fashion so the design of the the garment how much of the fabric is part of that design or is it that you give the fabric to the designer and they create or they get involved in the design of the so it's it really depends so in our history we have always worked with that you know textile artists artists most of the prints are coming from people who do not work in a commercial setting which is why most most of our patterns are created are not created in house we have an artwork studio that will translate them into our world but most of the work are coming from us collaborating with an ever-growing creative community we we sort of have similar to you guys we have a theme we create all the yearly themes I really think Marumiko has permission to slow down we don't have to follow the the fashion cycle that's much so we work through one theme for our year for example for 2025 the theme is the anatomy of flowers and it allows us to look at flowers from a quite abstract conceptual ways and and one way of doing that would be we will go into our archive and we will dig out you know archive prints that would fit the theme maybe at the same time we will work with some of our our you know communities to create new prints and then as the third layer we would so for example for the anatomy of flowers we work with this Swedish London-based designer or artist Petra Bona and we actually allow her to leave the work so we just supply the canvas and we need to figure out you know how to create the best possible canvas for her work so it's sort of it's a little bit of both you know we are we are commercial business with with the 170 stores and 34 countries we cannot just be artistic so it's a it's a it's a a balance between that we create a commercial collection and we use that as a canvas for print and then we create these more artistic collaborations where we really allow the artist to sort of decide what would be the format of the canvas so going going back a little bit to the conversation on the craftsmanship you Martin made me spend a lot of time at the shop in Helsinki at the at the house section yes our on you is the that's part of the business so the not the fabrics the yeah we have always when I said that we're probably one of the the oldest lifestyle brands it we have always been both ready to wear and home and and textiles so it is it has always been part of the business today we're sort of half half you know plus minus ready to wear back accessories and home and and textiles on the other hand we share some textiles we share between fashion and home some patterns we share some we don't we always work with the same theme so we have the same framework that we work into but but of course what we see and of course also spread by the pandemic our the interest in degrading your home you know through extreme measures during during the pandemic so of course it always means that we have expanded our home collection how much of maybe this question should be for Tina but how much of marimek with finish or how much of of Finland is in marimek are those things very connected yes I think I cannot even even I can answer that I mean Why Mego isn't hardly finished and a lot of our clues come from Finnish culture, Finnish design tradition, but also I think there is appreciation for nature and a lot of our references are Finnish designers, we use among others our elder, it's a huge inspiration for us. And I think what you see in Finnish design is that there's always this heavy contradiction with the architectural and nature of the organic and the graphic. It feels like it's a theme in a lot of Finnish architecture, in a lot of Finnish design, and it's also a theme in a lot of our prints. Is it like Italy or Artec? So clearly those are when anyone talks about Finnish design, those are the dimensions. But the reason why I'm asking these questions is because we are always very excited with discussion around national identity and you are now seated here in Abu Dhabi in a beautiful city where this discussion has been happening. And when we talk about or with designers and we start codifying that identity and saying this is a morality or this is not a morality, the discussion on what is Finnish or what is not Finnish is a discussion that is really interesting from. And I wonder if you can, because you are the nation, there's a common element between the Finnish and the Norwegians and the Swedish and the Danish on the Nordic design. But why do you think that we look at something and we say that is Finnish, is because we recognize the shapes and we know that those shapes are of a local brand or is it something else? No, I think that is something else and it's, I think it's a really interesting conversation especially now also like are we celebrating Finnishness or Scandinavianness for example. I think there is something inherently Finnish in this meeting between nature and architecture, this and the role of nature in design. I think now we met at the Vani Deni and I think Vani really speaks to the Finnish oxomorum which I love when they describe that. The white nights and the dark winter or I think the extreme cold and the summers where the sun never sets so they're the happiest people but also the people that listen to the most heavy metal. I mean that's so many extremes and contrasts in Finnish culture, Finnish tango culture. And I think there's a Finnish tango culture and tango festivals, yeah but and so and I think there's something in that in that oxomorum or in that at my maker we refer to that as happy contradictions, you know, in actually celebrating the contrast or the contradiction of not shying away from that, the first I think one of the the first time, the time that I visited my maker printing mill T9C gave me a tour and she was explaining to me all the story telling in the prints and how for Finns the forest is a safe place and I think in most, most fairy tales throughout the world the forest isn't scary place but for Finns the forest and the forest animals, they're your friends and the forest is a safe place. I think there's something in there that is so evident in Finnish design, this celebration of the material, the pine, the forest, the nature, nature always as an inspiration or a reference for designs in the shape language, in the pattern language, in the material choices. So I think that is something that is inherently Finnish. I think my role as a Dane sort of having the opportunity to help create a Finnish brand is to ensure that it is translated in a meaningful way to the rest of the world so that the Finnishness is still inherent and protected but also that it's sort of contextualized in a way that makes it relevant. That connects really well with the part of the discussion we're having with the guys from Spaker, Valin and Svan and on the subject of timelessness and you just said something that I guess for every episode we take something that it will help us write a book in the end. The idea that you just mentioned about celebrating those contrast is something that I as a designer try to not do so usually it's try to blend and to make something that it's like smooth and coherent and consistent and this celebration of the extremes is something that it makes a lot of sense and connects with that other elements that we spoke in the previous episode which was the timelessness and we like to say that design in Abu Dhabi is timeless but we found out that we used the word wrong because our perception of timeless is this contemporary minimalistic design and then Svan said no but timeless design is very dated because you look at modernist design we are seated in you know prove chairs that you don't say they are from 2024 you say they are from 1960 or 50 but they are timeless. So the timelessness doesn't come from in a way I don't know why and it was not very smart from my side it was this idea that timeless starts now you know like it it's almost like we are designing timeless and today we start timeless but this idea of the contracts that you are saying the patterns of money meco that are usually recognizable they celebrate those contracts you know I think I read about the origins that it was the idea of being bringing joy also to those patterns so you have those but at the same time it's extremely timeless because you have the same patterns some of those patterns exist almost for the whole duration of the company how do you how do you look at this Scandinavian timelessness because almost all design that is done in Scandinavia could be said at this time was. Yeah I think it's really interesting or this misunderstanding that minimalism would be timeless yeah I think there's so much fake minimalism out there which is just not doing fewer things better but just doing less and I think I think but I don't think it's the same you know I think I think minimalism is like really sort of getting to the core whereas there's a lot of now you know just having arrived from Seoul there's so much fake minimalism in Korean design there's so much of just not really designing entry but just letting it be so I think timelessness comes from when there's real integrity and design a real belief system I am someone who is a huge fan of the sort of early modernism I honestly believe that good design makes people's lives better and I think if that is sort of your intent in your design that good design should make people's lives better then I think you're onto a timeless aspect in design because you're less concerned with trends or fairness or you're less concerned with whether you will be liked I think that's also something and the timelessness is also being less concerned about what other how other people perceive the quality of your work but you really try to instill quality in everything you do so if when we design collections it's quality and fit it's quality in material it's quality in timeless value it's quality and exciting you know it's like ideally designing address that any age any body shape can wear and pass down to the next generation when we design table setting it is that we design into modular systems that you can continue to expand or play into or so never being sort of concerned just with the nounness of anything but always trying to contextualize that sort of into the past present future I really like that idea that timelessness comes from the beliefs that led to the design and not to the trends or pleasing but how does that work in a world where everybody does everything with focus groups and you know and asking everybody's opinion so how do we how do you sustain a brands with the quality of of Marimeku in a world that you know at the end of the day were all companies we all need to deliver numbers and how does that balance work because you still have a really strong set of beliefs and values that kind of we can see in the way that that the brand comes out, but how do you balance the pension? - Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, at my record, we have a sort of a proven record of more than 70 years, that we stay true to our design, identity, our design DNA, but of course there's no, a point if we're not relevant. I mean, there's no point in designing something that's not relevant, and thank God we don't have focus groups, but we have customers, yeah, and that's our large focus group, and they will let us know if we're doing well or not doing well. I strongly believe that you should never try to cater to the popular taste, but instead you should stay really true to what you only you can do, but then apply it to, that's where we talk about the canvas, apply it to a canvas that is relevant. So of course, there's a difference in our tastes today than 50 years ago. I think our color sensibilities, changes, or volumes, changes. I think we see this in everything, in architecture, and foods, and furniture design, and I think you need to adapt to that without compromising the integrity in sort of your design DNA. - Yeah, obviously with brands like, for example, Artek or Marie Meco, it becomes, if looking at Artek specifically, a brand that we love, and that we celebrate so much, it's kind of, there's a movie, yeah? So this is it, this is who we are, this is how we represent what we believe is good design, and how it comes out. And there's that timelessness, obviously. It's a great example of a timeless brand, but it's also a brand, and I think that the hymns, I think Alvaralt or hymns, they lived, I don't know, many thousands of kilometers apart from each other, but there was this very strong sense of, I believe this is the right thing, I believe this is what I should be doing, and it was not, oh, do you like what I'm doing? And am I pleasing you with what I'm doing? And that is something that I envy. - Yeah, but I think there was also with them, and I think it's so interesting to see your space here, and there's so many of our references there, so we love, we also love Elto and Eames, we love Shalot Perien and Probe, and we love some of the Danes. I think what a lot of them had in common, that my big author has in common, is this wanting to bring joy to people's life through also through great design, I think wanting to find ways of manufacture, doing great qualities in ways that made the product accessible to more people. So I think maybe that's also when you asked me about the, what are the commonalities with the Nordic brands? There might also be something in this democratic value, and in the sort of creating the meta-chair, it's the Elto stool, yeah, that's like a, if you asked a child to do a stool, I guess it would look like the Elto stool 60, yeah, or if you would ask a child to do a dress, then it would look like the Mario Maker Mini A line dress, there's something in this like meta-quality, or the most iconic version of something. Well, I think we're about to wrap up, but there's definitely something you said that, I definitely recognize in Mario Maker, which is bringing joy to people. I think it's almost impossible to wear something. I never wore anything Mario Maker need to try, maybe to see if it works on me also, but I definitely see my family and the people that I know, I remember bringing some people to Mario Maker in El Sinky that didn't know about Mario Maker, never heard about Mario Maker, and we took them inside the shop, and it was immediately, it's almost like immediately, because there is that explosion of stimulus, I think that stimulus comes, obviously the patterns of the flowers could be, but it's not, it's not only, it could be the stripes, but there is something about it that definitely brings joy to people. And there's also a very, very specific color, I think often we always talk about Mario Maker as patterns or prints, but there's also, we have a huge color library, and we have real color philosophy. And I think actually my vehicle is, I believe, as recognized for our color combinations, there's some really odd combinations that only we do. And I think that's also, again, back to this, also more or the heavy contradictions. There's also something in being bold enough to do that. - Rebecca, thank you so much for coming to visit us. - It has been a pleasure to meet you, Antina. It is, I'm sure, we'll find ways of continuing to meet somewhere in the world, I don't know where it's next time, maybe in coconut, I don't know if it's somewhere. - I would trip to the Pimeo, it's-- - Exactly, exactly, I can't wait for that. We are as part of this season. We are also going to launch something which is the ripple collective trips. And the first trip ever is going to be to Finland. We're going to, we want to take the team there in the spring, not in the winter, in the spring, and we want to do the tour, you know, using our network of friends there to find a little bit more about craftsmanship in Finland. So we'll definitely, we'll be there. Thank you for coming, and see you soon, somewhere else. - Thank you for having me, and I hope you will include a trip to the Pimeo when you come to Finland. - For sure, that's a promise. Thank you. Thank you.