Pia Holm

Pia Holm, how did you become a textile designer?
My interest in interiors and fashion awoke as long ago as my childhood, in our colour-saturated home, which was built in the 1970s. Orange, yellow and dark brown framed the decorative, medallion wallpapers, and patterns were used in an original way.

After I graduated as a clothes designer from the University of Art and Design Helsinki, I worked as an illustrator and I felt I had found the right form of expression for myself. Taking the step to become a textile pattern designer seemed natural; designing fabrics is for me an opportunity to get deeper into art and the product.

What inspires you?
My life and the environment surrounding me are my source of inspiration. The natural world around my home in the archipelago is breathtakingly beautiful, and I think about how much I like it every day. I also enjoy the throng of people in the city, in suitable doses. My other sources of inspiration are my family, gardening, beautiful books and art.

Describe your design process. How do you usually work?
I constantly collect fledgling ideas around me. I make sketches and fill little black notebooks with them. The best ideas often come while you’re doing something workaday, when ideas can float around freely. I work with several ideas at a time and immerse myself completely in a world of colours and forms.

What are the most important aspects of a designer?
The ability to surprise yourself as well as the onlooker. Open-mindedness and the ability to interpret things and connections in a new way. The precise instinct of a designer combined with determination and self-confidence.

What does the word Marimekko bring to mind?
Marimekko gives me a sense of enormous respect. High-quality and durable products which also possess a deeper artistic content. Marimekko also stirs in me, as no doubt it does in many others, memories of sunny summer days at the summer cottage as a child. The way Marimekko fabrics glisten on the cottage’s wall or how a tablecloth flutters in the breeze on the veranda.

What is it like to design for Marimekko?
I’m grateful and happy that I’ve been given an opportunity to create new products for an excellent brand and at the same time to get to know nice and highly professional people. An atmosphere that encourages ideas is the finest thing a designer can have.

What do you aim to communicate with the fabrics you design?
I’d like my fabrics to convey the enthusiasm of creation and enjoyment of life. If my fabrics get the onlooker excited about decorating, my mission has been a success. When I’m designing I genuinely try to give something from myself that will make the product human and soulful. I love decorating, and a well designed product is always welcome in my home.

What kind of environment would you like to see your fabrics in?
I would most like to see the fabrics I’ve designed in homes for which they’ve been chosen with love. It would also be nice to see my fabrics in products designed and sewn by the buyer themselves. A third sphere that would excite me would be to see my fabrics used as elements of interior design in a modern, architecturally discreet building.

What do you dream about?
I dream about beautiful light filtered through trees and mild summer evenings in a scented garden. I also dream of late-summer expeditions in the forest and a boat where you could switch the motor off to listen quietly to the lapping of the waves.