Saturday, March 12

We have come to Stockmann to see what we can see. I realise that the criteria for an interior designer at Stockmann must now include “the ability to make a shrinking amount of goods look as though they fill a space”. You could play football in the spaces between the displays in some parts of the store now. You certainly couldn’t play hide and seek because you would scarcely find anywhere to hide.

On the top floor I pause to look at the new additions to the Unikko range of plates from Marimekko, including one which has semi-transparent stripes superimposed over the flowers. According to Finnstyle,

The Marimekko Unikko pattern is one of the most widely recognized in the world, but it would not have been born without one designer’s defiance. Marimekko founder Armi Ratia decreed that there be no floral designs, insisting that real flowers have a natural beauty that motifs cannot capture or attempt to recreate. In protest at being told what to draw, designer Maija Isola created a whole range of floral patterns, one of which was Unikko. The flowers were so distinctive Ratia could not turn the instant classic down. In 1964 Marimekko Unikko was born, and it remains a timeless and modern mainstay in the Marimekko collection today.

We both agree we like the new blue colour.