The young designer of the year 2023 wants to dispel body shame and give everyone the joy of enjoying fashion.
In the picture, Henna Lampinen is in the middle. Caroline Suinner and Meriam Trabelsi of the Pehmee collective were seen as models for her collection. MORTTI SAARNIA
Henna Lampinen has won the Young Designer of the Year 2023 competition.
Lampinen, who graduated from the master’s program in fashion at Aalto University, took a stand in terms of clothing sets that fashion should be more accessible to bodies of all sizes and looks. The theme of the year’s competition was joy.
– I decided to approach the theme through what prevents people from being happy and would also be related to fashion. One such is body shame. If we spent less time shaming our bodies, regardless of size, we would have more time for everything else, such as joy, says Lampinen.
– For example, today obesity is perceived as something that should be actively ashamed of. However, I think it shouldn’t be like that
Meriam Trabelsi is another of Henna Lampinen’s models. The clothes are designed for size 54. MORTTI SAARNIA
All the outfits included in the competition work are designed for size 54. The clothes are largely made of recycled materials such as leather jackets, silk shirts and mother-of-pearl buttons.
Chairman of the competition jury Jaakko Selini according to Lampinen’s work challenges the fashion market’s ways of designing and selling clothes for plus size women.
– For läskis, as the winner himself directly says. Big Girls, Great Girls or Big & Beautiful... With his wonderful work, Lampinen showed the jury that the time for these circular expressions of fatness in fashion is over, Selin times.
The winning photos were taken by photographer Mortti Saarnia. MORTTI SAARNIA
According to Lampinen, who was awarded at the Copenhagen Fashion Weeks 2019, fashion should be accessible to everyone, and the idea is not being realized in the fashion world at the moment.
– The ideal of thinness is extremely powerful in the field of fashion. It is a force that moves the entire industry really strongly and leaves many kinds of bodies out of the fashion space. As a student, I have experienced that its effect has also emphasized my own feeling of being an outsider, because my body has by no means fit the norm used in the field.
Lampinen’s own interest in fashion was ignited precisely from this flaw. She couldn’t find nice clothes for herself that also fit her body.
Henna Lampinen will be awarded with a 5,000 euro scholarship donated by the Finnish Fair Foundation. He is also participating in the I love me event organized at the Helsinki Fair Center on October 20-22, 2023, with his own stand and in the program of the event.