The afternoon sky was dramatically overcast for Marimekko’s Spring/Summer 2025 show, but it served as the perfect canvas for the brand’s vibrant prints and colours to be experienced in all their glory at Copenhagen‘s Opera Park. “We have chosen the Opera Park as our location, as this is an amazing opportunity to show the collection against a backdrop of nature meets architecture, but also because we could not resist sending the models along the flower meadow paths before joining the bigger runway,” explains creative director, Rebekka Bay. With a brief downpour coating guests, the show’s jolting soundtrack, courtesy of Nene H, was amplified—sounds propagate more quickly in the humid air.
Celebrating its 60th anniversary, the iconic ‘Unikko’ design, initially created in 1964 by Maija Isola, actually takes a backseat for Spring/Summer 2025—a decision Bay tells GRAZIA was intentional. “We wanted to explore the theme of the anatomy of flowers for 2025,” she says. “It’s an opportunity to revisit and highlight some of our lesser-known floral prints from our vast archive of more than 3500+ patterns.”
With a high summer palette of aqua blues, cool spearmint, poppy red, and soft lilac, floral and botanical subjects were presented in breezy silhouettes. Inspired by organic shapes and floral petals, layers bloomed along the body with petal-like references in draping, layering, and materials.
“To me, this collection reflects the very mission that we have at Marimekko, which is to bring joy to people’s everyday lives and empower people to be happy as they are,” says Bay. “This collection has a specific energy and although we work with archive patterns from different decades and with our archetype silhouettes, this collection reflects a modern take on the Marimekko brand with its energy and dynamism.”
Despite its instantly recognisable designs, Bay sets out—and achieves in spades—to create a feeling over an aesthetic.
“Marimekko is a way of life,” she says. “It’s a philosophy for living, made for everyone.”
This story first appeared on GRAZIA International.