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Artek and Marimekko just came together for a new collection thats the epitome of Finnish design excellence. Artek, a furniture company founded in 1935, partnered with the design house and printmaker Marimekko to ring in Artek’s 90th anniversary. The collaboration takes three of Arteks most iconic designsthe Stool 60, Bench 153B, and Table 90Dand pairs them with equally iconic Marimekko prints, transforming Arteks minimal birchwood surfaces into a kind of art canvas. The stool, bench, and table retail for $550, $1,240, and $1,255, respectively, and are available for a limited time on both retailers websites and through select dealers. The collection brings together the two legacy Finnish brands decades of expertise in their fields, serving as an example of how both are leveraging collaborations to reach new audiences. [Photo: Elizabeth Helttoft/Artek] Leveraging brand collaborations For both Artek and Marimekko, brand collaborations have served as a lever for tapping new customers both outside of Finland and among a younger generation of design enthusiasts. In recent years, Marimekko has expanded its reach through partnerships with brands ranging from Crocs and Target to Uniqlo and the Finnish jeweler Kalevala. Artek, meanwhile, has worked with the English fashion designer Paul Smith and, as another branch of its 90-year celebration, is teaming up with the beloved childrens brand Moomin. [Photo: Elizabeth Helttoft/Artek] In a press release, Marianna Goebl, Arteks managing director, shared that Marimekko and Artek are an obvious matchbut that the collaborations outcome is anything but. We have woven together our respective identities, creative visions, and core expertise to create something truly unexpected, Goebl said. The collection is one of bold yet subtle beauty. [Photo: Elizabeth Helttoft/Artek] A truly unexpected collection Artek and Marimekko have existed within each others creative orbits since the mid-20th century. In fact, the companies founders knew each other personally: In 1975, Marimekko founder Armi Ratia wrote to Artek founder Alvar Aalto to share, I will always be proud of you here in Finland and also in the outside world. Despite a long relationship, this is the first time the brands have come together on a line of co-created products. We are both brands with bold and distinct identities that have been shaped by architecture, nature, and human-centric pragmatism, said Rebekka Bay, Marimekkos creative director. To me, this collaboration really highlights our shared values and celebrates the most distilled parts of our respective crafts while also bringing something surprising and unexpected to our customers. For the furniture launch, Artek used three prints from Marimekkos Arkkitehti series, a collection of bold patterns that Ratia commissioned from designer Maija Isola between 1959 and 1964. The prints (called Lokki, Kivet, and Seireeni) feature curving, organic patterns that Isola sourced from nature. Where Marimekkos work typically uses high-octane color to bring patterns to life, Artek has employed a marquetry technique to emboss them onto its most recognizable bentwood furniture piecesallowing the Finnish birch itself to illuminate the shapes. For Marimekko, the dress acts as the canvas for our art of printmaking, and in our collaboration with Artek, the birchwood furniture became the canvas for our prints, Bay said. The product is a series of furniture that manages to strike a balance between Arteks sleek minimalism and Marimekkos loud, joyful aesthetic.
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E-Commerce
Alo Yoga is getting into luxury bags, but it doesn’t appear it’s looking to sell many of them. The brand’s first bag collection, unveiled September 9, features responsibly sourced leather and suede designs priced from $2,000 to $3,600. The limited collection features the Voyage Duffel, which Katie Holmes was spotted toting without a pair of Alo leggings or branded hoodie in sight. Other styles include the bowler-shaped Odyssey; the Balance Bucket, which can be worn as a cross-body bag; and the Tranquility Tote. Each comes with an “intention crystal,” a one-of-a-kind crystal that Alo says “carries the resonance of your intentions throughout your day.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by ALO (@alo) Priced like a Prada, this isn’t exactly the type of bag made for holding your sweaty gym clothes and throwing in a locker. It’s meant to push Alo beyond athleisure and into luxury. The collection marks an effort by the brand to level up through a premium offering with limited availability. Throw in a complementary crystal, and you manage to drawn in affluent woo woo Erewhon influencers and MAHA moms. “When it comes to bags, people want to carry something that reflects who they are,” Summer Nacewicz, Alo Yoga’s EVP of marketing and creative, tells Fast Company. “Our customer is incredibly loyal and looks to Alo for products that fit seamlessly into her lifestyle. These bags are built with the same craftsmanship and attention to detail you would expect from heritage houses, but designed with versatility and wellness in mind. At first, some might be surprised to see Alo in this spacebut once they touch and feel the product and experience the quality of the bags, theyll see why it makes sense. This is the future of luxury wellness.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by ALO (@alo) Aside from press images, the bags are, in actuality, both hard to get and hard to see. The collection is on display at just two Alo locations: its SoHo flagship store in New York City, and Beverly Hills flagship store in California. The brand will also display the bags in a showroom during New York Fashion Week. The collection can’t b purchased with a click online, either. Should you be interested, there’s an extra hoop to jump through: To view the collection in person or receive more information through “private client specialists,” the apparel brand requires an email address. This strategy does give Alo some benefit, if not mass sales. It allows the premium athleisure brand to build a mailing list of customers who have money to burn on a pricy luxury bag, while also providing face time with customers and turning the purchase process into an experience. A private company based in Los Angeles, Alo Yoga was valued at $10 billion as part of talks for a deal for development capital in 2023 that was ultimately canceled, according to PitchBook. Founders Danny Harris and Marco DeGeorge started the brand in 2007 and named it for the words air, land, and ocean. Though Alo launched with a focus on yoga apparel, the company was perfectly positioned for the pandemic boom in athleisure that helped other activewear and yoga brands grow their customer base. Alo aims to differentiate itself from sportswear competitors like On and Nike by leaning into the luxury market. By building a client base of top spenders for exclusive products and experiences, Alo is also hoping the love of luxe rubs off on the rest of the brand. A couple grand on a bag might be out of reach for most of Alo’s customers, but suddenly $128 leggings don’t seem so expensive.
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E-Commerce
This is an excerpt from Consumed: How Big Brands Got Us Hooked on Plastic. An odd symbol, made up of three arrows arranged in a triangle, began showing up on plastic containers across America in the fall of 1988. Inside it was a number. The idea to put codes on plastic containers came from the Society of the Plastics Industry. By 1987, Lewis Freeman, the trade bodys head of government affairs, had begun hearing that the fledgling plastics recycling industry was struggling to make sense of the dozens of different types of plastics they were receiving. The plastics had different melting points and other properties, which meant they couldnt just be mixed together for recycling. “Plastics is not really one material; its umpteen materials,” explains Freeman. “While plastics share a similar molecular structure and most are made from oil or natural gas, theyre otherwise quite different from one another.” Before he joined SPI in 1979, Freeman worked as a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, fighting Senator Ted Kennedys push to break up big oil companies. At SPI, where he stayed for more than 20 years, Freeman dealt with anything that could pose a reputational risk to the plastics industry. He spent much of his time convincing companies to make changes that would forestall the risk of regulation. When it emerged that dozens of babies each year were dying by drowning in large plastic bucketsat five gallons, the buckets were so heavy that if an infant fell into them, they didnt tip overFreeman was the man who rallied the industry to hand out warning stickers to parents buying the buckets. The companies, he remembers, didnt want to add permanent labels, which made the buckets a few cents more expensive. Eventually, they capitulated when it became apparent their legal liability was enormous. “Companies are essentially all the same regardless of industry,” says Freeman. “They dont like to be told by someone else that they need to do something, period.” A symbol to aid recyclersnot consumers Back in 1987, Freeman took the complaints he was hearing about recycling to SPIs public affairs committee. Since the industry saw recycling as a tool to mitigate reputational damage, the public affairs group, consisting of men from big packaging makers like Owens-Illinois and the American Can Company, was the natural place to discuss it. The dizzying array of plastics on the market was hardly the only issue plaguing recycling. Plastics popularity came down to it being light, cheap, versatile, and robust. But being light and cheap hurt on the other end. Haulers, who were paid by the ton to collect recycling, made far more money filling their trucks with heavier aluminum or cardboard than with lightweight plastic. Things were worse for some plastics than others. Polystyrene foam was economically unviable because it was mostly air. Plastic bags, wraps, and films also had to be collected separately, or they gummed up sorting machinery. Packaging makers preferred virgin over recycled plastic since it was better quality and usually cheaper. If there were no buyers, it didnt matter how technically recyclable something wasit wasnt going to be recycled. Back in the late 1980s, only containers made from PETthe plastic used in single-use drink bottlesand HDPEcommonly used to make milk jugs and detergent containerswere being recycled in any significant volume. (The situation remains the same today.) These plastics werent turned into new soda bottles or milk jugs, but instead downcycled into lower-grade construction material that was just one step removed from the landfill. All the other kinds of plastics went straight to landfills or incinerators, if they werent littered. Slapping a code on the bottom of plastic containers wouldnt fix most of these problems. But at least it would help recyclers know what they were dealing with, Freeman told SPIs public affairs committee. Many plastic resin producers in the room were against the idea. They feared that including a code would encourage consumer goods makers to spurn plastics that werent being recycled. Even the makers of recyclable PET and HDPE containers didnt embrace Freemans proposal. Freeman compares them to the bucket makers who preferred to sit on their hands until they had a legislative gun pointing at their heads. “The bottle manufacturers opposed it because it required them to do something,” he says. Freeman eventually prevailed. He insisted the code was a way to forestall mandatory regulation that could be far more expensive and onerous. For plastics that werent currently being recycled, the code was the first step towards enabling this, he added, since it meant they could be more easily sorted. And so the “resin identification code,” as the industry called it, was created in 1988. While there were dozens of different types and subtypes of plastics, SPIlooking to keep costs and complexity lowgrouped them into seven broad categories, which still stand today. They are: Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), used for soda and water bottles High-density polyethylene (HDPE), used for milk jugs, detergent containers, and shopping bags Polyvinyl chloride (PVC), used for credit cards and pill packs Low-density polyethylene (LDPE), used for disposable gloves, trash bags, and dry-cleaning bags Polypropylene (PP), used for yogurt tubs, takeaway boxes, and butter containers Polystyrene (PS): the solid kind is used to make disposable cutlery and cups, while the expanded kind (EPS) is used for foam egg cartons, meat trays, and fast-food containers Other plastics: a catch-all for remaining plastics including multilayer packages like pet food pouches and ketchup sachets that incorporate different types of plastic, as well as bioplastics “It was a marketing tool” To separate the number from other descriptors used on containers, SPI enclosed it in the chasing arrows symbol. It was a strange choice, one that would cast doubts over the plastics industrys motives for decades to come. Back in 1970, Gary Anderson, a 23-year-old architecture student at the University of Southern California, had seen an enormous wall-sized poster advertising a design competition. Sponsored by Container Corp., a paper packaging maker that was also the largest paper recycler in the U.S., the competition required participants to design a symbol “for the love of earth” to “symbolize the recycling process.” Andersons designfeaturing three arrows twisting and returning into themselveswon. He got a $2,500 tuition grant and a trip to Chicago in September 1970 to attend a press conference at Container Corp.s headquarters. “I was kind of an arrogant little punk student, and I thought the whole thing was kind of silly, actually,” recalls Anderson, who back then sported a goatee and wore his red hairbleached blond by the California sunin curtains parted slightly to the side. Through the 1960s, the paper industrymuch like plastics would laterhad faced mounting criticism about how its disposable products were flowing to landfills. Container Corp. made the new chasing arrows symbol available to the entire paper industry for use on shipping containers and folding cartons, saying it hoped the symbol would spread awareness about the importance of pape recycling. “It was a marketing tool,” explains Anderson. Despite this, in 1988, when the Society of the Plastics Industry decided to use the chasing arrows on plastic containers, its executives insisted the resin identification code was not meant to indicate recyclability. It also said the code was not aimed at consumers. Freeman says SPI chose the chasing arrows to distinguish the numbers from any others that might be found on containers, and that it was only meant to help recyclers sort plastic resins from one another. “It was not an attempt to deceive people that because an item had the code on it, it was recyclable,” he says. But, looking back, Freeman acknowledges that recyclability is exactly what people took the code to mean. “That ended up being the presumption people drewand still draw until this day.” What does “please recycle” really mean? Within a few months of its inception in 1988, the SPI code began catching on across the US. Colgate put it on its bottles for Palmolive and Ajax dishwashing liquids. P&G slapped it on Jif peanut butter jars, bottles of Crisco oil, Tide and Cheer laundry detergent bottles and tubs, and even on its plastic detergent measuring cups. Including the chasing arrows symbol together with the resin identification code on products that couldnt be recycled gave consumers the impression that they could. “They are made from polystyrene,” a P&G executive told reporters about the plastic detergent measuring cups, which he claimed were recyclable. “Thats number 6 on the plastic recycling code.” But local facilities didnt accept the cups, and they were not recycled. By the early 1990s, at the urging of SPI, 39 states had enshrined the code as law on rigid plastic containers. Companies eagerly embraced the law, but also started putting the code on flexible plastic wrappers for everything from pantyhose to Subway sandwiches. Some brands had begun to use the exhortation “Please Recycle” alongside the chasing arrows symbol on plastic products and packaging that couldnt be recycled, claiming this was an educational effort. Surveys showed that the majority of consumers thought that “Please Recycle” meant consumers could recycle those products in all or most communities in the U.S.. “Over time, even companies who initially opposed developing the code grabbed on to it and started putting it on everything,” says Freeman. “Companies decided it was in their interest to look green, and they ran with it. They ran with it until the cows came home.” Excerpted with permission from Consumed: How Big Brands Got Us Hooked on Plastic by Saabira Chaudhuri. Published by arrangement with Blink Publishing, an imprint of Bonnier Books UK. Copyright 2025 Saabira Chaudhuri.
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E-Commerce
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