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With Love, From Finland
It all began in 1949.
Viljo Ratia founded Printex, a small Helsinki-based textile printing company, in 1949. Viljo's wife, Armi Ratia, envisioned a bold future for textile design and manufacturing. To fulfil her vision, she gathered promising young artists around her and asked them to create new and striking fabric prints for Printex.
One of the young artists was Maija Isola, whose Amfora design was among the first fabrics printed at Printex.
The Marimekko logo, inspired by the simplicity of Olivetti typewriter letters, was born in 1954. Towards the end of the decade, the story of Marimekko began to spread across the seas: first it reached Sweden and soon after the United States.
Marimekko is a Finnish home furnishings, textiles and fashion company based in Helsinki. It made important contributions to fashion in the 1960s. It is particularly noted for its brightly colored printed fabrics and simple styles, used both in women's garments and in home furnishings. Two designers in particular, Vuokko Nurmesniemi, with bold stripes, and Maija Isola, with large simple flowered prints, created hundreds of distinctive patterns and helped to make Marimekko a household name across the world.
