LAB Institute of Design and Fine Arts is a school for creative minds who think outside of the box.
A community of true creators who want to envision the world as something different, and better.
A home for fearless optimists who roll up their sleeves, turning hope into action, imagination into unexpected solutions, and ideas into practical change.
LAB Institute of Design and Fine Arts – Let’s reform it!
26.5.2026
Helsinki
The annual KOE Fashion Show is an expressive event that spotlights emerging fashion designers from the LAB Institute of Design and Fine Arts. KOE Fashion Show is part of the international Fashion in Helsinki event, which brings together the professionals of Finnish fashion and design each year. KOE Fashion Show serves as a stage for graduating students’ collections.
KOE26 showcases 10 collections created by inspiring designers. They are shaping the sustainable future of fashion through their perspectives and research on their thesis themes. Additionally, KOE26 presents looks and concept collections designed by third-year students, as well as circular design outfits by second-year students.
Some of the most important values of KOE26 are sustainability and circularity. This can be seen throughout the production of the show, all the way to the collections. With this in mind, we are proud to be working with multiple sustainable collaborators, which enables us to bring the KOE Fashion Show to you again this year.
collections
KOE26’s collections themes include the tension between femininity and professional credibility, extending the lifespan of maternity wear, and the use of craft techniques in garment design based on post-consumer textile waste. The collections also explore dirt and soiling in clothing, bodily tissues as inspiration for knitted surfaces, emotional safety against words, provocation, symbolism, and sculptural approach to menswear.
Juulia Alin
Waking Dream
Juulia Alin is a designer who loves all things weird and abnormal. She considers herself to be more of an artist who uses clothing as a canvas to express herself. She wants to make art, such as paintings, wearable and seen in other places than just hanging on a wall. She often mixes different kinds of techniques and textures in her designs. The products are meant to be unique and make the wearer feel like they are the artwork themselves. Her creations often stem from real human feelings and fears that most people probably relate to.
Sustainability is extremely important to Juulia as a designer and an artist. She aims to use as many secondhand materials in her work as possible. She also makes sure all the materials are as high-quality and lasting as possible. Her products aim to be wearable in addition to being artistic.
Her graduate collection, “Waking Dream”, explores how surrealism can work as an inspiration for a clothing collection. The collection is inspired by typical surrealistic themes such as dreams, the subconscious, and the human body. Illogical things beyond our reality are a typical inspiration for Juulia in her artwork, and she wanted to bring that signature style of hers into this collection as well. The products mix bizarre imagery and symbols with surrealistic shapes and textures. The designer brings her inspiration and artistic vision to life in wearable products.
juulia.alin@gmail.com | @ghoulsandjules
Photographer: Estella Laasonen
Model: Saara Paasonen
Makeup artist: Iina Sutinen
Hair stylist: Annika Wickman
Linda Eenilä
Soft Power
Linda Eenilä is a thoughtful and playful designer who values sustainability, aesthetics, and experimentation. With her handmade details, she believes that craftsmanship adds value to designs and that collaboration offers solutions for the benefit of innovations.
Eenilä and Emilia Kiiskinen share the same interests in hand skills, communality, slow fashion, and sustainability, which is why they chose to collaborate on their thesis work. Eenilä explores the possibilities of hand smocking in fashion design, while Kiiskinen focuses on material innovation through felting from a circular perspective.
In their thesis, they study these traditional handicraft techniques as a basis for the circular fashion design process. They explore how craftsmanship can extend the lifecycle of pre- and post-consumer textile waste. This way, they offer an alternative to current unsustainable production and consumption behaviours.
In their collaboration thesis collection, Eenilä has taken responsibility for designing the upcycled and smocked pieces, many of which utilise the new felted material made from pre- and post-consumer textile waste developed by Kiiskinen. The experimental and innovative collection is inspired by the contrast between the structured, three-dimensional form of smocking and the intuitive and organic nature of felting. Their material-based collection utilises the original features of the materials used. While quality handiwork is usually invisible, Eenilä and Kiiskinen highlight its visible aesthetics and soft power in their rich, feminine collection.
linda@eenila.com | @lindaeenila
Photographer: Lumi Tolonen
Alo Ellisaar
Minu Sees
As a designer, Alo Ellisaar views the world through a macabre lens, finding beauty in what many consider taboo, ugly, or even repulsive. These darker themes inhabit his work; what first appears as a technically refined garment often carries a deeper, more morbid narrative beneath the surface. His practice is rooted in a strong connection to texture, with a particular focus on knitwear. For Alo, clothing exists as wearable art, yet functionality remains essential creating pieces that are both conceptually rich and physically wearable.
Sustainability is a core principle in his work. By using discarded materials, Alo transforms what is unwanted into something desirable, mirroring the themes he explores. He reclaims the overlooked and gives it new value.
In his thesis work, Alo researches how human inner tissues can be interpreted through knitted surfaces. The collection explores the net-like structure of fat, the wetness of connective tissue, and the grain of muscle, while examining how the senses respond to these contrasting textures. He also investigates how sensorial design methods can evoke a sense of luxury within his designs. The collection questions how humans are treated in certain industries, where individuals are reduced to mere “pieces of meat,” much like animals in a slaughterhouse. Through his work, Alo explores whether macabre themes can be transformed into something meaningful, thought-provoking, and ultimately, beautiful.
alo.ellisaar@gmail.com | @aloellisaar
Photographer: Okko Tamminen
Model: Fotini Mikaela Manninen
Muah: Julia Alisa Hoefler
Sanni Kallunki
Femininity to Credibility
Sanni Kallunki is a fashion designer whose work is driven by a devoted love for beauty. For her, fashion is a way to escape into another reality, where playfulness, girlhood and self-expression create space for freedom and imagination. As a designer, she draws inspiration from femininity and its many forms. Her work is guided by a desire to create garments that feel both delicate and strong.
Her collection is based on the tension between femininity and professional credibility. It explores how characteristics typically associated with femininity are constructed and interpreted. The work is grounded in the idea that clothing is not neutral, but carries meaning and shapes how qualities such as confidence and credibility are perceived.
Through her design process, she examines how feminine elements, such as lightness, softness, and decorative details, can convey confidence and authority in a professional context. The collection combines strong silhouettes with delicate details, creating a balance between strength and softness. She brings together playfulness and clear silhouettes, exploring the balance between these elements to form a cohesive whole where femininity and credibility support one another.
Sustainability is an essential part of her design process. The collection is created using second-hand materials and natural fibres. She also considers the longevity of garments by focusing on quality, durability, and timeless design. Through her work, she seeks to express femininity as confident and credible, rather than something that needs to be restrained or hidden.
Sannikallunki1234@gmail.com | @sannikallungin
Photo: Elias Jimenez
Model: Reetta Loppi
Make-up: Iina Sutinen
Emilia Kiiskinen
Soft Power
Emilia Kiiskinen is an artist and designer who values creative sustainability, inclusiveness and visible human touch as core principles. With her material- driven work she mixes methods and utilizes any material available. She believes that craftsmanship and collaboration offers solutions for the benefit of new innovations.
Kiiskinen and Linda Eenilä share the same interests in craftmanship, communality, slow fashion and sustainability, which is why they chose to collaborate on their thesis work. Kiiskinen focuses on material innovation and mechanical recycling process through ancient felting techniques from a circular perspective while Eenilä explores the possibilities of hand smocking technique in fashion design.
In their thesis they study these traditional handcraft techniques as a basis of circular fashion design process. They explore how craftsmanship can extend the lifecycle of pre- and post-consumer textile waste. This way they offer an alternative to current unsustainable production and consumption behaviours.
In their collaboration thesis collection Eenilä has taken responsibility for designing the upcycled and smocked pieces, many of which utilize the new felted material made from pre- and post-consumer textile waste developed by Kiiskinen. The experimental and innovative collection is inspired by the contrast between intuitive & organic nature of felting and structured, three-dimensional form of smocking. Their material-based collection utilizes the randomness and the original features of materials used.
While quality handwork is usually invisible, Eenilä and Kiiskinen highlight its visible aesthetics and soft power in their rich, feminine collection.
emiliakiiskinen@gmail.com | @emilia
Photo: Lumi Tolonen
Jenna Mehtäläinen & Emilia Taavitsainen
She Who Always Sees Blue Sky
As designers, Jenna and Emilia are driven by a strong sense of empathy, responding to practical challenges and creating meaningful solutions that support others. For them, design begins with personal experience, guiding their work to be both practical and user-centered. Their collection reflects this approach, driven by a desire to create clothing that genuinely responds to women’s changing needs. The idea for the collection emerged from lived experience: during pregnancy, finding garments that met personal needs proved unexpectedly difficult.
Hän Näkee Aina Sinistä Taivasta (She Who Always Sees Blue Sky) explores pregnancy and the postpartum period as a stage of life that deserves to be seen and celebrated rather than concealed. The changing body is understood as a natural and beautiful process, and the garments are designed to support this transformation both physically and emotionally. The designs are built on the principles of comfort, practicality and versatility. Inspired by 1980s tailoring, it combines strong silhouettes with a softer, more adaptive design approach that moves with the body.
Each piece includes adjustable elements and transformable structures, allowing it to adapt to different stages of pregnancy and beyond, including the needs of early motherhood. The aim is to extend the lifespan of each piece, making it relevant in multiple contexts rather than tied to a single moment. Sustainability is approached through longevity and circulation. Timeless design and carefully considered material choices allow the garments to be reused, shared or rented, enabling one piece to serve multiple users.
The collection reflects a mindset of optimism and acceptance, seeing beauty in change and living along with the body.
seesattire@gmail.com | @seesattire
Photographer: Taika Marttinen
Model: Roosa Turunen
Muah: Jasmiina Walters
Iida Myllymaa
Emotional Curtains
Inside of Iida’s head, there lives a lover of maximalism: Yellow-green, electric blue and petrol, lots of patterns and sensual felines. Creative enthusiasm, female rage and a deep interest in space, emotions and textiles guide her as a designer. She is very interested in pushing the boundaries between design and art.
In her thesis, Iida explores modularity and multifunctionality in textiles through printed fabrics. The thesis collection is wearable but also expands to be suitable for interiors. These products can be used as space dividers, curtains or wall hangings, which makes the collection more experimental.
The thesis’s core inspiration is a driving force for change, around which the collection’s concept and visual elements are built. Iida is fascinated but also scared by the nature of life and the fact that everything is temporary. Uncertainty is always present, but we can navigate through it in various ways. She has designed the patterns by interpreting basic emotions, forming mental landscapes and a continuum of change. Consept aims to push boundaries and involve people in creative and active participation, wearing and using textiles.
As a designer, Iida appreciates the creative possibilities of textiles, as well as their rich and narrative aesthetic. In addition to creativity, sustainability is particularly appealing in modular and multifunctional designs, increasing a product’s utility and extending its lifespan through design. A single product can serve as many different products thanks to its adaptability, thereby increasing its significance to the user. Furthermore, the use of the zero-waste method in the collection’s patternmaking was important for the designer.
iida.myllymaa15@gmail.com | @iidamyllymaa_design
Photographer: Maija Pöysti
Model: Sara Helminen
Muah: Julia Alisa Hoefler
Milja-Liina Myllyntaus
Piece of Examines
Milja-Liina Myllyntaus is a designer inspired by silence and its quiet power. Her work explores unspoken taboos, invisible social norms, and the tension between what is considered acceptable and what is often pushed aside or left unnoticed. She is particularly interested in contrasts between the familiar and the unfamiliar, combining what is desirable with something uncomfortable or outside of the norm. Through these opposites, both extremes become more defined, gaining new tones and meanings.
Her collection Piece of examines the value of stains in clothing. Stains are often perceived as flaws, but this collection celebrates their presence as carriers of memory, history, and individuality. It reflects on society’s pursuit of perfection and success, while questioning the pressure to constantly improve and maintain an idealized image. Within this pursuit, the value of lived experiences and personal narratives is often overlooked.
The designer encourages viewing stains as a possibility. The collection exists at the intersection of elegance and imperfection, creating a tension between the polished and the raw. This tension invites the viewer to reconsider what is desirable and who defines it.
Sustainability is a core part of the design process. The collection is created using discarded textiles sourced from Mustankorkea waste management center, alongside second hand materials and leftover fabrics, bringing new life and meaning to materials that might otherwise be overlooked.
Piece of ultimately suggests that our imperfections do not need to be hidden. Imperfection is more perfect than perfection.
miljaliinajuulia@gmail.com | @miljaliinajuulia
Saga Nurmenniemi
Viini, villa ja näätä
Saga Nurmenniemi makes art intuitively but practically. In wearable design, Saga likes to have fun with different textures, colours, and especially materials that don’t generally go together. She has a very maximalist style, and all of her work is strongly guided by her love of Romanticism. If Saga were to choose a slogan, she would say “Celebrate the everyday”.
Saga thinks of sustainability as a necessity in design. She uses mostly natural fibres and makes an exception only when synthetic fibres add to a product’s longevity. She aspires for her designs to have functionality, modularity, and styleability, as they make a product desirable, but also usable on as many occasions as possible. Saga pays attention to social responsibility. She loves to create clothes that fit one body through its changes, and she does it, for example, by making a single piece adjustable for a wide range of sizes.
Her graduating collection, Viini, villa ja näätä, balances the status of leather and fur with functionality in wearable pieces. Saga studies how the status of pieces can be raised with leather and fur. Her collection’s visual inspiration comes from a historical regal world, and the contrast of the collection is made with low-status elements, such as undyed fabric. Contrary to Saga’s usual style as an artist, this collection uses few colours, clear lines, and the only pattern is embroidery. Viini, villa ja näätä are all about the details.
There is no farmed fur used in Saga’s collection. All the leather and fur in her collection comes from Hanna Nore, a traditional tanner. All the materials are traceably obtained, mostly from wild animals, with a few exceptions of owned animals.
sagasylviaatelier@gmail.com | @sagasylvia
Photographer: Estella Laasonen
Model: Aleksandra Peus
MUAH: Annika Wickman
Pipsa Saarinen
VARO MUA
Pipsa Saarinen is a fashion designer whose work emerges from emotions. Her design practice is rooted in one’s experiences and what we learn from them. Her mission is to create garments that empower individuality and support responsibility. Saarinen’s designs balance functionality and visual impact, encouraging wearers to express themselves authentically every day. Fashion should be a force for good rather than bad, and that everyone deserves to wear clothing that makes them feel confident and comfortable.
Through her thesis collection, Saarinen transforms these experiences into visual and material language, using natural liquid latex. Latex, with its skin-like texture, elasticity, and protective qualities, becomes a metaphor for the “thick skin” that people develop as a defense mechanism.
Saarinen explores questioning why such armor is necessary in the first place, advocating for a world where emotional safety is a fundamental right. Her work highlights how individuals often internalize harmful words, shaping their self-worth and behavior over time.
At the same time, Saarinen is driven by material innovation and sustainability. She investigates how natural latex traditionally associated with subcultures and fetish aesthetics can be recontextualized within contemporary, commercial fashion. By exploring its properties, she aims to expand its applications beyond niche use and reduce stigma of the material.
Through her work, she invites you to protect your peace.
pipa.saarinen@gmail.com | @pipsajosefiina | @musta_official
Photographer: Maija Perko
Model: Oona Pöyry
MUA: Minttu-Maria Gratschew
INFO
KOE26 Team
Juulia Alin
Linda Enilä
Alo Ellisar
Sanni Kallunki
Emilia Kiiskinen
Nooa Kuuva
Pietari Kykkänen
Irene Matesanz Liceras
Jenna Mehtälä
Iida Myllymaa
Milja-Liina Myllyntaus
Kalle Niemi
Saga Nurmeniemi
Ansa Rajakangas
Pipsa Saarinen
Saga Santonen
Viivi Silvast
Emilia Taavitsainen
Vilma Virtanen
Supporting team:
Event coordinator: Susanna Björklund
Photographers: Mark Sergeev, Estella Laasonen, Kadi-ly Pund
Video: Mark Sergeev
Graphic designer: Peppi Pöyhönen
Digital Development: Hash Varsani | Varsani.Media
contact
SPONSORS
Press
Previous shows
