Armi Ratia (1912-1979) was a pioneer in modern textiles and the industrialization of artistic product design; her signature style–bright colors, big patterns–remains extraordinarily influential on global fashion and design today.
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Hello, from Wonder Media Network I’m Jenny Kaplan and this is Encyclopedia Womannica.
Today’s episode is about one of the most celebrated entrepreneurs in the history of Finland. A pioneer in modern textiles and the industrialization of artistic product design, her signature style -- bright colors, big patterns -- remains extraordinarily influential on global fashion and design today.
Let’s talk about Armi Ratia.
Armi Ratia was born in 1912, in Karelia [Ka-RAY-lee-uh], a contentious area on the border of Finland and Russia.
In her early 20s, Armi studied at the Central School for Applied Arts, in Helsinki, and majored in textile design. In Helsinki, she also met her husband, Viljo Ratia.
In 1935, Armi moved back to Karelia. For four years, she ran a small weaving studio, where she produced original textile designs.
In 1939, just three months into World War II, the Soviet Union invaded Finnish Karelia. What followed was the quick but brutal Winter War.
Armi’s family fled after their homes were burned. She later said that she survived the war with nothing but “a raincoat and a gas mask that leaked.” Armi made her own contributions to the war effort by working on a military code development project, while her husband was on active duty.
After the war, Armi began working as a copywriter for an ad agency in Helsinki. Her husband, Viljo, left the army and co-founded Printex Limited, which made oilcloth fabrics.
In addition to her work at the ad agency, Armi served as a business consultant for Printex. Unfortunately, sales never met Viljo’s expectations no matter what they did to try and increase business.
So in 1949, Armi had an idea. What if Printex moved away from oilcloth, a waterproof fabric often used for things like raincoats and picnic blankets, and started creating and marketing modern textiles. From her previous experience with Finnish artistic craftwork and textile creation, Armi was well aware of the product versatility that beautifully designed and crafted materials could allow. While oilcloth was popular for a decidedly specific set of traditional products, its growth opportunities were limited. They needed fabrics and patterns that could be used in a variety of ways and fashions, and that would appeal to a much wider swath of consumers.
To bring this vision to life, Armi brought on Maija Isola to serve as the company’s first full-time product designer. Maija’s work had a bold and distinct style that critics loved. But the public found her bright, patterned designs intimidating.
In 1951, Armi decided to hold a fashion show, which she called “The Marimekko Project.” She also created a firm of the same name.
The goal of the fashion show was to demonstrate the potential of the fabrics. They were a textile company after all, not a fashion house. The clothes themselves were not for sale. The cloth and the sewing patterns were supposed to be the main attraction. But the show’s audience went wild for the finished products. Women started buying the outfits literally off the runway. Armi, shocked by the response, seized the opportunity and announced the clothes would continue to be sold.
The next few years would prove a steep learning curve for Armi and her company. Marimekko was still tied to Printex, which was run by Armi’s husband. Tensions arose around Marimekko’s popularity, and the finances of both companies. As independent firms that were built with the explicit goal of doing design work, both Marimekko and Printex were pioneers within the design firm space. While this allowed them to do some extraordinarily creative work, it also put both businesses at constant risk of failure.
But in 1959, Marimekko’s fortunes changed. Benjamin Thompson, an American architect with a side business in furniture and interior decor, saw a Printex fabrics display at the Brussels World’s Fair. He immediately reached out to Armi and they eventually arranged for her to travel to Cambridge, Massachusetts with a big selection of Printex fabrics and Marimekko clothes. Thompson gave Armi and her products excellent placement in a Finnish-themed design show that he was helping to organize.
Thompson’s show was a hit. New orders started rolling in. It didn’t hurt that John F. Kennedy, who was campaigning for president at the time, did a spread in Life Magazine with his glamorous wife Jacqueline wearing Marimekko dresses. When the magazine hit newsstands, Marimekko and Printex sales went through the roof. All of a sudden Armi was a celebrated figure in the fashion and art worlds, especially beloved by intellectuals and liberals who saw her as a fellow traveller.
In 1962, Armi decided that Marimekko would become as she said "a cultural phenomenon guiding the quality of living.” She adopted the idea of creating a utopian “global village” that she called the Mari-village Project. Its aim was to house the staff of Marimekko and Printex, exist as a living laboratory for the two firms’ product designs and ideas, and to “develop new ways of life.”
Marimekko and Printex merged in 1966 under the name Marimekko. While the company continued to grow at an extraordinary pace, massive expenditures on things like decadent nightly parties in the Mari-village threatened the future of the company. By the late 1960s it became impossible to continue operating with such financial negligence. Things had to change.
In 1969, Jaakko Lassila was named chairman of Marimekko’s board and immediately began trying to bring the company’s finances under control. He got rid of the Mari-village Project, the related parties, and a bevy of other extraneous expenses. For all intents and purposes, Armi was sidelined.
But after a few years, during which Marimekko regained fiscal health, Armi returned to the helm of the company. She subsequently made the decision to sell licences for Marimekko-designed textiles to firms in Japan and the United States. This allowed foriegn companies to manufacture Marimekko designs in their own plants. It ended up being a brilliant and highly lucrative business move.
In 1972, Armi became a celebrated figure in Finland once more with the release of a clothing line that became the unofficial uniform of influential young radicals who had risen to power a few years before. And with her renewed popularity and additional money coming in from the sale of manufacturing rights, Armi once again started up wild parties filled with influential artists, media figures, and politicians.
With all of the added expense, the company started losing money and, once again, Jaakko Lassila was brought in to put Marimekko’s house back in order.
But by that point, even Armi herself was starting to slow down.
In her final years, Armi lived a somewhat more relaxed life. She finally realized that her company was perhaps too large to run wholly by herself, even as she remained the personification of the Marimekko brand.
Armi retired from Marimekko in 1976. She passed away three years later on October 3, 1979 in Helsinki.
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