The people from the Scandinavian region are among the most romantic people I think I’ve seen. Their attitude towards their environment and lifestyle has been such an aspiration for all and not to mention their stunning natural landscapes. It seems like a perfect place for nature and man to co-exist. Yes it does.
I came across this shoe designers duo KUULA + JYLHÄ, two finnish designers and their work is a lot about experiments, but always also respecting the traditions of well made objects. Their shoes are handmade in Helsinki/Tallinn and materials are acquired as close as possible. Their leathers come from inside EU, mostly from Italy and Spain and all of their wooden parts come from Finland.
In their latest shoe collection, titled “THE WILD KING OF THE N.O. WONDER HORSES”, they have beautifully combined horse hair and vegetable tanned leather from Northern Ostrobotnia and birch from Northern Ostrobotnian forest. The shoes are modern and chic. And not to forget cleverly designed. To further why I think Scandinavians are romantic, here’s the collection write-up they wrote for the collection:
“Small groups of wild horses were reported through the 1940s and 1950s in an area between the Baitag-Bogdo ridge and the ridge of the Takhin-Shaar Nuruu (which, translated from Mongolian, means ‘the Yellow Mountain of the Wild Horse’), but numbers appeared to decline dramatically after World War II. The last confirmed sighting in the wild was made in 1969 by the Mongolian scientist N. Dovchin. He saw a stallion near a spring called Gun Tamga, north of the Takhin-Shaar Nuruu, in the Dzungarian Gobi (Paklina and Pozdnyakova 1989).”
For collection 2014 we travelled with the Wild King. From the Ural, through Mongolia and gazed him in the eyes at the spring called Gun Tamga.
It is important for sustainable designers and their customers to know their sources of each materials and knowing that by going local, can reduce the carbon footprint we have on the environment. Opting for quality materials may be more expensive but it has proven to last a lot longer as well.
Image Source: kuulajylha.com