Years ago, back when I was an aspiring hipster escaping the mundane horrors of suburbia, I consumed every blog I could find to see what the cool kids were wearing. One particular blog convinced me that Helsinki was some sartorial promised land, a place where every other Finn was living out the Brooklyn fever dream with a Nordic twist.
Hel Looks is the brainchild of fashion tech power couple Liisa Jokinen and Sampo Karjalainen. This Finnish fashion bible has been around for nearly two decades. Jokinen reminisces, “In the summer of 2005, day and night, young glam rock kids were hanging outside Kiasma, the museum of contemporary art. They were hardcore Hanoi Rocks fans, and their showy, colorful looks caught my attention.” And so, Hel Looks was born and the couple embarked on a mission to capture the city’s most unconventional trendsetters, interviewing them about their daily wardrobe inspirations.
I was perpetually awestruck by these snapshots of everyday Finns in outrageously modish outfits, and Hel Looks is still going strong today. Fast forward a few years, I found myself living in Helsinki (only to discover that not literally everyone was a walking runway show) and now I even know some of the people on that blog personally, and was surprised to see their faces come up when I flipped through the photos most recently. I probably shouldn’t be, because it’s very famous among the fashionable crowd there even now, at times even coming off like a Finn-wide inside joke, like I was once told something like “Oh yeah, my friend got approached the other week, she’s on there now” in the most offhand tone, like it’s just getting called up for jury duty.
I wasn’t able to figure out exactly why Finnish people, in particular, are so stylish in the capital, but I came to the conclusion that they hold onto their old clothes much longer than some other places in the world would seem to. As a result, a trip to your local UFF (their equivalent to Goodwill if you’re American, or Oxfam/BHF charity shops if you’re from the UK) easily yields the kind of fashion grails that get photos of you snapped on the street and posted on fashion blogs for the rest of the world to see. Who knows, maybe you’ll even look cool enough for a night out with the in crowd at Post Bar.
Still, it continues to interest me to see how global fashion trends are being interpreted in a very specific part of the world, and how over time this blog has become a time capsule documenting the evolution of style over the last two decades, and possibly the only place remaining where we still have to be subjected to the 2014 skin-tight joggers with longline tees fad. In fact, true to the popular 20-year cycle theory, the blog is now so old that the oldest trends documented on there are coming back into style (myspace-era indie sleaze, anyone?)
There are plenty more fits to see on the blog, and Liisa always tries to ask the subjects what exactly they’re wearing, where they got it, and what inspired their current look, which could be anything from their mom or the current season to Florida or race cars.
Bonus: The minds who brought you Hel Looks also divide their time between their home country and the US, so naturally there is also NYC Looks, which takes the same format and points the lens at the inhabitants of New York. There is a lot to see so I’ll let the results speak for themselves.
