Ulla Engeström

Finnish Steet Fashion on HEL LOOKS

A new Finnish street fashion site, HEL LOOKS, has just been launched. Behind this cultural historical deed are Liisa Jokinen and Sampo Karjalainen, who run a creative workspace in Kankurinkatu Helsinki.

The project is a tribute to Fruits and Street magazines, the pioneers of street fashion photography.

A tip: to be spotted by the HEL LOOKS radar, hang around the modern art museum Kiasma.

Dig, mix, and wear

It's not only designers and hardcore trend sharks who are snooping into arty neighborhoods hunting cool. Forbes writes:

Truly dedicated followers of fashion are abandoning trends entirely and going to the source for vintage couture. In the process, they're turning vintage rags into a very hot commodity. (...) In the past few years, vintage fashion has gone from the province of artists and alternative musicians to the preferred mode of society ladies and young professionals.

The move of vintage from the margin to the mainstream is part of the broad shift that is going on in the fashion industry. Today, brands sell newly manufactured clothes designed by professionals. In the future, an increasing number of garments will be made by amateurs who remix vintage. The industry leaders will have to adapt, or they will be disrupted by new entrants. For example, Urban Outfitters sells real vintage. It also mass-produces vintage-looking clothes. But savvy consumers are not settling for ready-made solutions.

I hope second hand shopping is not just a passing trend because in the long term, the shift to authentic vintage could help sustainable development. The cotton industry is one of the biggest users of global water resources. When a larger part of clothes are obtained second-hand, there is less need to produce new fabric.

My favorite vintage shops

-In Helsinki:
Play It Again Sam, Rauhankatu 2
Ruuturouva, Fredrikinkatu 16
Nasta, Liisankatu 15
UFF Second Hand, Iso Roobertinkatu 4-6

-and Stockholm:
Chanesse, Grev Turegatan 1 (vintage and new)
Emmaus, Götgatan 14 (Södermalm), Gjutarplan 18 (Kallhäll)
Jenny Stil, Södermannagatan 18 (vintage and new)
Judits Secondhand, Hornsgatan 75
Lisa Larsson Secondhand, Bondegatan 48
Myrorna, Adolf Fredriks Kyrkogatan 5-7
Flea market, Wollmar Yxkullsgatan 3
Påkläderiet, Södermannagatan 21
Repris, Bondegatan 46
Ruby Vintage Clothing, Wollmar Yxkullsgatan 10
118 Second Läder, Sigtunagatan 5
Stadsmission, Hornsgatan 58 and Hantverkargatan 78
Tant Gerdelins Garderob, Karlavägen 72
59 Vintage Store, Hantverkargatan 59

How to find design objects online?

Yesterday I saw a nice bag on a crafter’s blog. What I would like to do now is to find that page again and buy the bag. Unfortunately, I did not bookmark the post. I know what product I want to buy, but I can’t find it.

Some time ago I found a beautiful tray from a flea market in Kopenhagen. On the back it says just “London”. I’d really like to find out who has designed and manufactured it, but currently there is no easy way to do that. In this case I have the product, but I can’t find any information about it.

Compared to books and songs, finding design objects online is still fairly difficult. This is mainly because self-made, second-hand or even new products rarely have unique, memorable names. They are just bags, trays, T-shirts, etc. by designer x, crafter y, or company z. Although many designers and crafters document their creations on individual websites or blogs, they are currently not using any universal product identification system (like ISBN) that would help search engines.

Things would be different if creators identified their products in a way that linked together the online and offline worlds. Crafters and designers who want to promote their work could start labeling products not only with the designer name, but also with a unique product name (like the “Ällösöpö” T-shirt by Kutita, see the picture below), a permalink to the post designating the product (http://www.kutita.net/allosopo/), and perhaps also some kind of unique identification number.

Labeling the product with a memorable name may have solved my problem in the case of the bag, provided that googling the product name would have led me to find the lost blog post. In the case of the tray the problem is more complicated. Even if I had known its name, I would't necessarily have found any information about it online. In order to know more about this product, my current options are thus to google 'trays', or to post a picture of the tray on my blog and hope someone will recognize it. Neither option sounds really promising.

Crafters put photo tagging to work

Individual crafters have been using Flickr to document their projects for a while. Flickr's photo-tagging feature is now also enabling crafter communities to pool their photos and create dynamically updating collections around specific themes. For example, A Month of Softies is a communal crafting project, which highlights different themes every month. "The themes will be mostly aimed at people who make dolls, toys, monsters", says project founder Claire Robertson, who is a craftblogger and illustrator living in Melbourne.

Claire recently decided to make A Month of Softies Flickr-based. She writes:

As of July 2005, if you would like to participate in MOS, it will be necessary to have a Flickr Account - if you don't already have one, please sign up and start one. ... Once you have your account up and running, please upload your photo of your creation to your account and make sure you tag it... For example, the tag you will need to use for July is "MOS July 2005" -- easy! ... This will mean when we do a search for July's gallery we will have an instant gallery from the first day someone sends in a contribution! ... Also, I have started A Month of Softies group on Flickr which includes a group photo pool and a discussion board so join the group if you are interested.

UPDATE: Works also with materials! See Kim's post about a vintage fabric pool on Flickr.