Dear Shaded Viewers,
Anna and Tuomas Laitinen
In 2006 Tuomas and Anna Laitinen won a special jury prize at the festival d’Hyeres, That is when we met and I’ve been following their upwardly mobile career ever since.
DP: What kind of music did you listen to when you were growing up?
TL: Our parents played a lot of Bowie when we were kids, so we’ve been stuck with him for ages now and the same goes with Patti Smith, It wasn’t until the 90s that we developed our own taste in music, which has pretty much stayed the same till this very moment. There’s five years between us, so Anna was the 1st one to discover the really cool stuff like Cure, The Smiths, Depeche Mode, Stone Roses etc. We also loved Joy Division, New Order, Siouxsie and the Banshees and all these other gloomy 80s bands, which were considered very unfashionable back then. We lived in this tiny village by the Russian border, where all the kids listened to Bon Jovi or Roxette. They thought we were totally pathetic and didn’t really bother to hide it. Then in the mid-90s the whole britpop thing hit us very hard. Suddenly there were all these androgynous stars with great style and irony like Jarvis Cocker from Pulp and Suede’s Brett Anderson and we desperately wanted to be like them.
DP: What were you wearing at the time?
TL: It was mostly crazy second hand stuff from salvation army or some old stuff we took from our parents’ and grandparents’ attics. The relationship between our family and our dad’s parents was a bit tensed to put it mildly, so the only reason for us to go to his childhood home was to empty the storage from these great old things. Some of them were from the 20s or even older. We did the whole layered grunge look and mixed it Gothic lacy things or our grandfather’s 50s suits. At one point we got all crazy about Twin Peaks and started wearing tons of plaid and vintage sheepskin jackets. Jarvis Cocker was a big style Icon as well with these very awkward vintage suits and dodgy patterned polyester shirts from the 70’s. Compared to all the other kids we really stood out as freaks. Back in those days you needed to have your pair of bleached Levi’s or you got your ass kicked big time.
DP: Finland is a bit removed from the fashion capitals, how did fashion enter
your lives?
TL: It’s funny that the whole fashion thing is happening here now. Finland has always been considered a country for more masculine fields of design like architecture or furniture. Even something like Marimekko, which was internationally big in the 60s was more to do with lifestyle than fashion. We were so lucky to have our mother, who was and still is literally the best dressed village freak in the whole world. She wore all Comme and Yohji and piled our library with books not only about fashion but also art and photography. Both of our parents really encouraged us to gain as much knowledge as possible and try new things. There was more problems with the careers office at school, when I told them I wanted to study fashion. They thought I was completely bonkers. Of course when we were teenagers in the 90s, it didn’t really matter that much anymore where you lived in the western world, because we watched Alternative Nation and Pulse with Swatch on MTV and bought our Face and I-D magazines from the village news stand. We were probably the only ones buying them though. Surely it would’ve been easier for kids like us to live in London or even Helsinki, but when looking back now, the distance had it its own perks. We were able to keep our own world a little longer.
DP: What kind of memories drive your collection?
TL: It still is about being an outsider, no matter where you go. Trying to find your tribe of like minded people with very little results. Sometimes it would be great to have even a drop of that naivety left that we had when we were teenagers. In high school we really dreamed about the moment we’re living right now, having our own collection and everything, but of course those dreams had very little to do with reality. But big dreams were the only escape from all the boredom surrounding us. We are hopelessly romantic, so of course when we’re looking back to our youth now it really is a romanticized view. When years go by you start seeing beauty in things, which originally were just plain painful. I once did a magazine interview with Lutz and he said that there’s nothing more beautiful than kids having stars in their eyes and we couldn’t agree more.
DP: How did you acquire such a great wardrobe and are you now starting to
wear your own clothes?
TL: I was completely happy with my second hand things until I discovered Helmut Lang when I was 17. I just thought what he made was so beautiful and modern. I started saving my every penny to buy Helmut and all those pieces are still in my wardrobe. Then came Raf Simons, who was designing for boys with my kind of body and taste in music. I just had this feeling he was reading my thoughts and feelings and felt the same connection with Hedi Slimane, who was designing YSL at the time. I did some modeling and started styling when doing my BA degree in Helsinki to pay for all these revolutionary things. One of my closest friends ended up working at Dior Homme, so she sometimes gave me some pieces from their early collections.The MA Course Director Louise Wilson at Saint Martins was furious with me, because I spent all my money on designer clothes. I left the college to buy buttons from John Lewis and came back with a Margiela jacket from the Browns sales instead. Somehow great clothes have always come to me despite having very little money to spend. Maybe clothes can sense my genuine love towards them and I’ve never cared for any other luxuries. At this point when all our income goes to financing the collection, we’re literally left with our last season press samples, so nowadays we wear our own stuff more and more. We both have a very complicated love-hate relationship with everything we do and maybe it would be too egocentric to wear only our own designs. Especially when there are so many beautiful things out there.
DP: You Write, you design, you teach, how do you divide your time?
Is one part taking over more than another?
TL: I only did multiple jobs, because I really needed the money not to make myself to look like some renaissance man. But all these little side projects have taught me so many things and I’ve met some really interesting people through them. Now when the collection is starting to take off I’ve been cutting off extra work, which has been a great relief. Basically I share my time between the college where I teach and the work with Anna. Even managing the two is a bit overwhelming sometimes. Our collection is still very small and we want to keep it that way for a while at least, but dealing with production, deliveries and fabrics takes an insane amount of time. Due to the lack of it I handle some of the collection things while I’m teaching, I think it’s good for my students to see how it really is to be a young designer just starting out and see both the good and bad sides of job. Let’s just hope they’re not too afraid to start their own lines when the time comes after witnessing all my stress and breakdowns. I was so skeptical when I started teaching, but I really do enjoy seeing my students develop and feel this almost parental pride when they succeed or even try to challenge their own creativity. Also working with the young ones really reminds me of where I come too, I love the fact that they still have this feeling that everything is possible and I’d hate to see them loosing that too soon.
DP: Is there any particular period that has influenced you more than
another?
TL: We really hate collections with too literal themes and we really try to avoid them. With us the biggest influence probably is the 1990’s just like some of the most established designers of today keep on referencing the 80’s when they were young. We love the style of young Morrissey or Jarvis Cocker, but we’d never do a Morrissey or a Pulp collection. Same goes for the films of Mike Leigh and Hanif Kureishi, which we watched passionately back then. The 90s, which for some is the decade of recession and boredom, suits perfectly the kind of melancholic romantic feeling we’re after. It was the era of Helmut Lang and the 2nd generation of Belgian designers, who influenced our aesthetics a great deal and so did photographers like Nan Goldin, Wolfgang Tillmans, David Armstrong, Corinne Day, and Juergen Teller. There was a real shift of generation back then, which produced amazing work and it seems so innocent and genuine compared to the corporate fashion world of today.There’s nothing wrong with nostalgia, but we think the result should always be modern.
DP: What has been the course of your life since winning at Hyeres?
TL: Well, without Hyeres we simply wouldn’t have a collection. Anna would be working in a bookshop and I’d be still doing all kinds bibs and bobs all over the place.The festival introduced us to many of our current buyers and the most incredible fabric mill, Punto Seta, by Lake Como in Italy. These great people have supported us from the very beginning and believed in our work. Without all the help we’ve received, there’s no way we could work in this level and deal with the kind of clients and press as we do now. Hyeres really is a crash course to the industry, if you’re smart enough to play your cards right. There’s no other place, where young designers can work with the best industry professionals like Maida GREGORY-BOINA and Frederic Sanchez or get mentored by someone as iconic as Ann Demeulemeester. It’s just a pity that we were so damn stressed during the competition that we almost forgot to enjoy the ride ourselves.
DP: You seem to know a lot of people in the business, how did you meet
them all?
TL: When you study in a school like Saint Martins you’re already taught by designers working in a very high level and your friends and class mates will eventually end up working in fashion houses all over the world or starting their own collections. I formed my circle of friends very organically. At the time we were all just kids hanging out at George and the Dragon by night and by day helping each other to survive through college work or assisting recent graduates, who were just starting out. Fashion is very close-knit industry, especially in London. You just go to a pub like George and you’re introduced to a bunch of great new people every night and maybe you end up helping them with their collections or a magazine shoot and they’ll return the favor a bit later. If we need a second opinion something now, there’s always someone to call or e-mail, which is a great thing. Also before moving to London I was interning in Paris and some of people who were assistants back then have now made incredible careers for themselves as designers, stylists, buyers, artists etc.
DP: A tired question, I
