This project, created by Elina Maria Vaakanainen, began during the 2020 lockdown in Como, where she had just started working at the Taroni textile company. Despite the emergency situation, she was able to continue working from her accommodation thanks to the company, which provided her with the materials needed for her experiments.
“1X1 Theater of emotions” was inspired by the existential condition imposed by social distancing; one meter was the minimum space allowed between individuals. The reflections prompted by that moment and the imposed distance led her to divide the double satin she had into one-meter squares, from which she created a capsule collection of five garments. It is a study on the nature of the fabric and on how the same amount and shape of material can be transformed in different ways using techniques such as moulage, dyeing, and embroidery, adapting each piece of silk to the feelings evoked by that period.
These garment-forms express a succession of emotional states experienced during the months of lockdown, far from everything familiar. They represent an exploration of memories and feelings — an inner journey where experiences, sensations, and images from childhood to adulthood intersect and evolve.
Born on Lake Pielinen in Finland, the “familiar” landscape found in Como awakened emotions that could no longer emerge in Rome. The contrast between Rome’s visual density — chromatic, architectural, and physical — and the clarity of the northern environment where her creativity was first nourished became evident.
All this coincided with a personal metamorphosis, a moment of cleansing and synthesis that symbolically marked the end of an era and the beginning of a new one: a long journey and a return “home”, to the core of the self.
“Transform the existing into the shape of the future” is her leitmotif and her philosophy for “starting over”, living and working in an equitable and ethical way in an era that can no longer allow disrespect toward people and the environment. Sustainability, she notes, must be central in today’s world — even as new vicious cycles are created through the production and certification of materials often far less sustainable than claimed.
“Less is more”: we must re-educate ourselves to live with less and, when possible, obtain what we need without creating new products. Time is our human value; the past offers lessons that must be preserved; and the future is the destination where this knowledge must be carried. The fashion revolution she imagines is the possibility for human beings to coexist in harmony with their environment.
Como is Italy’s silk capital, a city that connected her to the textile tradition. The mini-collection, created with precious materials from the company’s unused stock, also reflects on how a place conditions us: on the influence it exerts on individuals, on the resources it provides — not only in terms of raw materials, but also social, cultural, and political structures (its human and environmental fabric).
Upon returning to Rome, working at the art studio Off1c1na, she gave form to the notes traced during her months in Como. For the internal structures she reused leftover materials, such as polyester straps (used for car seat belts) recovered from a local scrapyard; earlier, unable to purchase materials, she had even sewn using threads pulled directly from the silk.
The result is a meeting of precious and humble materials, both in their own way “residual”.
This work contains the full testimony of her creative journey — pages of a travel diary from that year.
