Tracing hope – Fashion designer Enni Lähderinne
Seen from afar, the pale outfit looks like a weightless evening gown, its hem ready to lift its wearer off the ground. A closer look reveals that the top is hand-knitted and adorned with jewellery elements reminiscent of old spoons. The lower part turns out to be trousers, covered in thousands upon thousands of hand-tied fringes created using rya weaving techniques.
Enni Lähderinne says she spent over 200 hours tying those fringes. But the effort paid off: the ensemble, complete with a body ornament crafted from old cutlery, won her the title of Young Designer of the Year 2025. This year’s competition theme was fantasy.
Can hope be touched?
For the competition, Lähderinne interpreted the theme of fantasy through the lens of her late grandmother and her grandmother’s hopes. Her grandmother had once dreamed of becoming an opera singer, but a medical procedure altered her vocal range and redirected her life.
‘Life gave her other paths,’ Lähderinne says.
Those paths included conjuring a sense of magic for her family – for example through clothing. Even her own wedding dress echoed the iconic New Look silhouette of the fashion house Dior. So perhaps it is not surprising that the fringed lower half of Lähderinne’s award-winning outfit, made from reclaimed yarn and tulle, feels like an homage to Christian Dior’s design language, though crafted with recycled materials and the techniques of Karelian textile tradition.
‘In the project, I also explored what life might have been like if my grandmother’s dream had come true. To me, dreams are essentially wishes. Isn’t a dream just a wish looked at from a distance?’ she reflects.
‘Dreams, wishes, fantasies – they inhabit pretty much the same world. Maybe hope is something you can touch just a little more.’
Wishes fulfilled
Lähderinne describes herself as a naturally positive person who has been a dreamer since childhood. She believes hope – what the future might hold – carries her as a person, not just as a fashion designer.
‘But many of my wishes have already come true,’ she says with a smile.
‘I got into the field I care about, fashion. I’m a clothing designer, I won the competition. I’ve already received recognition. My next hope is to work abroad as a designer.’
Among her achievements, Lähderinne mentions interest from international stylists responsible for dressing major artists. Her fantasy collection piece has already travelled to Spain, and stylists for Lady Gaga and Chappell Roan have inquired about looks from her master’s thesis collection. She values that artists with something to say choose to wear her work. Lähderinne’s design sensibility is, after all, a message in itself.
The beauty of a curved back
Lähderinne may never have become a fashion designer had she not been forced to think differently about clothing as a school-aged child. In early adolescence, she had to wear a back brace 23 hours a day due to Scheuermann’s disease.
The rare, hereditary spine condition is treated with a custom brace that forces the wearer upright during growth years.
‘As a teenager, I couldn’t dress like everyone else. I had to scour thrift stores for men’s XXL clothes because the brace’s metal frame made everything extremely oversized. I wore it for four years.’
In her Aalto University thesis collection, she examined what kind of relationship a person forms with clothing when they have an atypical body. What does it mean when there is an extra layer between the garment and the body?
‘In that collection, I studied and used Dior again – his feminine ideal is almost poetic. I took, for example, a Dior evening gown silhouette and combined it with the shape of a Scheuermann’s back. I disrupted the harmony I wanted to show that it is beautiful. I think I succeeded.’
She hopes her work offers something meaningful to people with different bodies or those going through medical treatments.
‘Doesn’t seeing a model on the runway wearing a garment that fits your own exceptional body create hope,’ she asks.
Text: Tiiu Pohjolainen
The text was published in Aalto University Magazine (Issue 37, 2/2026) as part of the magazine’s feature article on the “Laboratory of Hope” exhibition, which was on display in the Marsio space at Aalto University in the spring of 2026.