A huge wooden gate by an alley in Marais, a colourful and rambling district of Paris, leads to a ramshackle, but charming yard. A spectrum of buildings from various centuries rises above each other – a building from the 1900’s rises behind a façade of a house built in the 17th century, just to be left in the shadow by a building built in the 2000’s.

Four hundred years old stairs lead to a humble iron door, which is opened by a fashion designer Tuomas Laitinen. We are in a small, charming apartment, which has become a LAITINEN showroom for the Paris Fashion Week.

The apartment is narrow and it has white walls, broken by dark logs, which are centuries old. Metallic spiral staircase leads to next floor. Windows give to the yard. The showroom is like a LAITINEN collection, which is hanging in wooden hangers in a horizontal bar. Plain and a bit melancholic.

A kick-start to the collection

LAITINEN is a collection of fashion designer Tuomas Laitinen and his sister, artist Anna Laitinen. The collection were given a kick-start in the autumn 2006, when it won a shared first prize at the appreciated fashion design festival and contest of Hyères in France.

“It all began in Hyères”, says Tuomas Laitinen, 28. “I designed and made some men’s knitwear to the contest and asked Anna to give me a hand. We sold the pieces made for Hyères to a French museum and made small batches for our clients – many of them came from Hyères”, he continues. “Our first official collection is now in stores and the next one is a collection for spring and summer 2008.”

The first collection of LAITINEN contains 18 outfits, half of them for men and half for women. There are approximately 40 pieces in the collection.

“We have intentionally kept the collection small, because it’s made of expensive materials and it’s also made of as good quality as possible at the moment”, says Laitinen. “The collection is mainly produced in Finland”, he goes on and tells that the Hyères win also made a co-operation with an Italian fabric factory Punto Seta possible. “It wouldn’t be possible to make the collection the way we do it now without the support of Punto Seta”, Tuomas Laitinen admits.

Style prior to age

”Our PR agency is marketing our collection with Northern darkness and indie angst, but that’s not quite the way I see it”, Laitinen says. “The way we work is very spontaneous and we just have a tendency to make things that are a bit melancholic and beautiful but stark. We design clothes that we would like to wear.”

LAITINEN is sold in some of the most appreciated chains of avant-garde fashion in France, Japan, Hong Kong and Qatar. Contacts to Maria Luisa and Midwest were all made in Hyères. The collection is also sold by Wunder in Helsinki, Finland.

”Consumers buying our collection vary a lot depending on the shop”, says Tuomas Laitinen. “Wunder sells the more inexpensive pieces of our collection for the 17-year-olds, and a client at Maria Luisa might have turned 70. The people wearing our pieces are roughly the same than those who like to wear Martin Margiela, for example.”

Art and international jobs

Tuomas Laitinen started his fashion design studies at the University of Art and Design Helsinki and then moved to Paris. He worked for a while there and then started his MA studies in London, at the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design – one of the most appreciated art and design colleges in the world.

At the same time Anna Laitinen, 32, who had studied art pedagogy at the University of Art and Design Helsinki, lived, studied art and worked as an artist in Barcelona, Spain.

Tuomas Laitinen worked in Paris in a consult agency in Paris after graduation and mainly made background research for American fashion houses. Economical reasons tempted him to work for somebody else for a while – monthly salary was a delicacy to a former very poor student.

Far away from stardom

Both of the siblings live in Helsinki at the moment. Tuomas is teaching fashion design in his former school and Anna is working as an artist. They bring a new collection to the market twice a year, but they don’t get their pay checks of it yet – all the profits are put to the next collection and PR.

”We haven’t yet marketed or hunted for retail points. We can’t even produce more at the moment. We are close to our limits now with delivering the orders to Japan. I know that we are such lousy business people; we even choose our shops according to whether we like the people there or not!”, he gives a laugh.

The Laitinen siblings aim in living with their collection – some day. Tuomas Laitinen refers to labels such as Peter Jensen and Stefan Schneider. “People see our collection in well-known shops and airports and think that we are great fashion stars. This situation couldn’t be further”, snorts Laitinen and smiles. A new star might have been born, but the beginning is rarely as easy and glamorous as it looks like.

Photos: Kristina Lampila, www.kristina.fi