Friday Feels Like: Vuokko

Master of stripes, Finnish textiles designer Vuokko Eskolin-Nurmesniemi is best known for her classic Jokapoika (‘Everybody’) shirt print from 1957, which beautifully demonstrates her conceptual way of working.

I fell in love with this women when I read an interview with her in issue #07 of Apartamento magazine, with imagery taken by Hanne Granberg taking place across several days and on different levels of her 1970’s-built Helsinki-based home, each time wearing a different pair of coloured overalls. Sold.

In this interview she talk about her house by the sea, “the house is open throughout, except for the bedroom. We live on four mezzanines, one under water. The most important thing about the house is the view to the sea – a sea that can take you anywhere. It glitters on our walls. Photographers love it. We built the house in nine months. It was 1970. We celebrated with a couple of friends by opening a bottle of champagne and sleeping on the heated floor.”

The interviewer of this story, Jenna Sutela, then shifts their focus to her iconic round glasses lying on the table in front of them, “Yes. I always buy four frames at a time, but now they’ve stopped making this model and I only have one pair left. It makes me a little worried.”

She then goes on to talk of how designing is really just a matter of asking yourself questions and answering them, “In the ’70s, for example, I was worried about pollution, so I dressed my models in capes and motorcycle helmets as a reaction.”

I love reading back on old magazines. Good magazines and journals never go out of date.