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The Fabric Of Our Lives Embraced by Manolo Blahnik and H&M, Marimekko shows its once radical prints have never gone out of style

Everyone in Finland and plenty of other people around the world have Marimekko stories, whether it's a memory of curtains made of the famous Unikko poppy print, flickering in the light of a sun that hardly ever set, at a childhood summer house in the Finnish countryside, or a roommate's cheery pillows that brightened up a dull college dorm in Chicago. Marimekko, the Helsinki-based print and fabric company, with net sales in 2007 of $116 million, has a universal appeal that transcends national boundaries. It's a company that is both revered by design aficionados and beloved by housewives; its creations are worn by the slim and the not so slim, and its snazzy signature prints are available on everything from onesies to pot holders. It's possible that Marimekko even helped usher in the Camelot era when a style-savvy Jackie Kennedy traded in her haute couture for one of the company's inexpensive summer frocks, which she wore to be photographed with her husband for a December 1960 cover of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED. In her breezy dress, Kennedy personified an elegant ease for women struggling to define themselves in a new age.

Today Marimekko casually thwarts a fashion system that decrees that if your not-so-stylish cousin in the burbs wears it then it's not cool enough for trendsetters like Manolo Blahnik or Anna Sui. Yet both designers are proudly part of a global club known as the Marimekkoites. Sui has been collecting vintage examples of the cheerful prints for years, and this spring Blahnik has created three shoe styles in Marimekko prints. H&M has launched a capsule collection this month featuring the most popular patterns from the 1950s to the 1970s. "Marimekko feels so modern," says Blahnik, who was reminded of the Unikko poppy's potency when he spotted it on a tea towel in a tourist shop. "There's a need right now for the bright and the bold. I think everyone should have a little bit of Marimekko."

So who exactly is Marimekko? The name translates literally as "Mary's dress" and figuratively as a dress for Everywoman (and, indeed, Everyman—the unisex Jokapoika shirts have been hot sellers since 1956). It is perhaps one of the first ever lifestyle brands (the Courier-type logo, which was inspired by a magazine headline, dates from 1954 and has been stamped on clothing and home wares ever since). The company was started in 1951 by textile designer Armi Ratia, whose husband Viljo owned an oilcloth-printing company that was struggling as a result of postwar shortages. Ratia was determined to set about turning the scarcity of fine fabrics, caused by postwar rationing, into an advantage by hiring designers to create inexpensive screen-printed cottons emboldened with color and exuberant pattern. That May, Ratia staged a fashion show at Helsinki's smartest restaurant, Kalastajatorppa, with the aim of showing women what they could do with the company's dazzling new fabrics by the yard. When women also clamored for the ready-made pieces they'd just seen, a fashion phenomenon, as well as a fabric house, was born.

It was a clothing and fabric designer named Vuokko Nurmesniemi, who worked for Marimekko only from 1953 to 1960, who really forged the brand's simple styles and its legacy of distinctive silhouettes, including that of Kennedy's shift. As for the company's eye-popping Tasaraita stripes, these were developed in the '60s by Annika Rimala. The patterns have been designed mainly by freelance artists, the most famous being Maija Isola, who by the time she died in 2001 had created more than 500 prints for Marimekko. She was able to mastermind an astonishing range, from the intricate and folkloric Ananas (1962)—which remains one of the most popular prints for the home market—to the radically simple, dramatically enlarged, asymmetrical Unikko poppy (1964), originally in red and in blue, which may be one of the most widely recognized prints on earth. "I think Unikko stood out immediately, and it somehow hit the world," says Isola's daughter Kristina, 62, a Marimekko design star in her own right. "Here, the blue-and-white version has come to stand even for Finland, while outside, the red-and-white stands for Marimekko."

In a company fueled by female power (and with a staff of more than 90% women), the poppy print was born when the forceful Armi Ratia told Maija Isola that Marimekko wanted nothing to do with the pretty florals that have been a leitmotif of industrially produced furnishing fabrics ever since the advent of William Morris and Liberty of London. The headstrong Isola responded with a flower print that owes nothing to an English country garden. Though today Unikko adorns everything from shower curtains to cookie tins, when it was introduced, the print seemed to channel the rising wave of '60s discontent.

Kristina Isola made working for the company a family affair. After spending her childhood with her grandmother on a farm that has been in the family for eight generations, she moved to Helsinki when she was 14 to live with her famous young mother, with whom she was collaborating by the time she was 16. These days Kristina's inspiration for her print designs is Finland's breathtaking natural world, along with the sense of magic and fairy tale that runs through Finnish culture. This spring, the company launched her latest work, Metsanvaki (Forest Dwellers), which draws on images of the pine, juniper and birch trees that grow near the back door of that family farm, where Kristina now lives. "The forest is very important for us," she says, explaining why Forest Dwellers is already a hit in Finland. "We pick berries. We walk. My grandchildren immediately see there are thousands of things hidden in a forest if you just look for them."

Erja Hirvi, 39, whose designs have been produced by Marimekko since 1995, says Finns, especially those from the frozen north, are particularly adept at drawing on their imagination. "When I was a child, there were five children in my class, and we lived far from one another," she says. Self-reliant in her life and in art, she says she can now conjure up entire patterns and colorways in her mind.

Anyone can submit a design to Marimekko, though the lion's share of those chosen for production come from Finns, who best understand what has become, in effect, a national brand. Maija Louekari, 25, who grew up in a far-north home full of Marimekko and had her first design produced when she was only 21, imagines her creations as "little children being sent out into the world." As for why her color combinations are so bold, she responds in a lilting accent, "It's so cold and dark, you need something delightful."