I honestly don’t know where Finnish fashion designers get all their inspiration from – they’re awesome. Helsinki-based fashion and knitwear designer Jenni Alava is a recent find that immediately impressed me with her work. The summer collection is fresh and just stunning, while the AW collection feels very Finnish – we tend to layer ourselves in knitwear during our cold winters. You would think that when the only interest you have is to stay warm it would be hard to do that in a fashionable way (and often I feel it is, my clothing inspiration drops to zero when it starts to snow, and most likely I will wear my piggy pants under a pair of ski pants because no one sees or cares anyway) – but that’s the wrong attitude to have. If you have a piece of beautiful knitwear to style your outfit around, what could possibly go wrong anymore?
 
Bad news? You can’t shop for Jenni Alava online, at least yet. Good news? You just got yourself a good reason to visit Helsinki, there are two stockists here at the moment. And have to add that there are some really great small fashion shops in our designs districts, so although Helsinki is not a cheap shopping city, we have some local pearls that can’t be found elsewhere!
 
Below are some of my favorite pics from her two previous collection, AW12 Cousins with all the knitwear, and SS12 Lighthouse Daughters that I would very much like to move to my closet like right now. Can’t even pick just one favorite from SS12 – it’s too good…
 
 

Photos from her website, AW12 photos are photographed by Diana Luganski and SS12 photos by Jukka Ovaskainen