What does My Little Ponies, Russian film director Andrei Tarkovski and Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake have in common? Saara Lepokorpi, the Young Designer of the Year 2007.

Saara Lepokorpi, 29, became the Young Designer of the Year in August. She started her fashion design career by making clothes for her My Little Ponies at an early age. She admires the analytical approach of the Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake and feeds her imagination with films directed by Lars von Trier, Andrei Tarkovski, David Lynch and Richard Kelly. And she lives in an apartment full of plants.

She was a surprise winner, who left other finalists behind her in the interview of the jury – not any before. Understanding and handling of form, volume and materials made her competing collection stand up from the other collections – and so did her origami clothes folded of paper, an inspiration to her collection.

Although you might think otherwise, origami is not a hobby to the designer, born in Tampere, Finland. “I must have done origamis as a child, but that’s it”, she laughs. “I just started to fold paper at work, because I was bored. At the same time I thought about the ways I could combine femininity, strength and strictness in women’s wear. I thought that I could make the forms of the folded paper in clothes as well.”

Artistic expression

Saara Lepokorpi is currently finishing her studies at the University of Art and Design Helsinki. She says that she has used the time of her studies quite much in the same way she created her winning collection Chick Business – by experimenting.

”I have concentrated on developing my skills in artistic expression at UIAH. I haven’t even tried to create commercial concepts. My work in a high-quality fashion store has taught me a lot of marketing, for example. I try to put my artistic and commercial knowledge together in my final work.”

She says that the outcome of different experimentations and projects has been the lack of her recognisable design. “It’s an advantage not to have a recognisable design style when designing to a client. It enables me to adapt to the style and needs of a client company”, she says.

”On the other hand, it would be great to have clear and personal style of design. These kinds of issues always come so strongly up from personality that it has to be seen in designing, as well.”

Small things matter

Clothes designed by Saara Lepokorpi are often multi-levelled and have plenty of volume. She admits that design education doesn’t include much pattern-making or sewing – her knowledge has come through experimenting.

”My skills in sewing and designing have developed since I was a child. I used to make clothes for My Little Ponies even though there aren’t any patterns to these toys. I put fabric on them and found out that I have to sew there and there to keep the fabric on the pony”, she smiles. “I have learned to make patterns purely by experimenting and doing it wrong at first.”

“Experimenting is still there. Sometimes really small things make a garment looking good or bad. The coat of my winning collection, for example, was really difficult to make and I tried and tried. I felt that it’s never going to be right!”, she sighs.

”I usually sketch the whole collection first to make sure that the collection will be a complete whole. When I start to find a form to a garment, I start to fold the fabric on a fitting doll. At this point, the garment may become totally different from the original. The next level is to sketch the garment again to get the proportions right. My designing is quite much doing things over and over again”, says the designer.

Giving time for her own collection

Even though the Young Designer of the Year is dreaming of her own collection, she is first planning on designing to an appreciated fashion company. “I would like to design very individual and high-quality garments, which would last for years – clothes that don’t have a clear message, but contradiction and space for interpretation.”

“The atmosphere should still develop to the way it has done in Finland for the past years before launching my own collection. This way I would be able sell the kind of clothes I would like to design”, says Saara Lepokorpi.

“I especially like designers, whose aesthetical vision is not limited to designing, but also to the designer’s personality and behaviour. [Fashion designer] Ilona Pelli, for example, is like that – a friendly person and a designer. I would rather work with nice people than with somebody thinking that everything is so painful and difficult.”