Looks Lux

Björk said the look was a tribute to the Busby Berkeley musicals, as well as swimmer and actress Esther Williams. "I thought it'd be very appropriate to wear a swan. I guess they don't do those things anymore, right?," she said afterwards, trying to understand the reaction.

Yet despite the continuing success of the traditionally handsome, the norm of the male beauty standard is opening up. Older models have seen a significant rise in popularity. Of course, we're used to conventionally handsome "silver foxes" such as Pierce Brosnan and George Clooney gracing our screens, but now older male models are frequently used in advertising campaigns and on runways, among them Anthony Varrecchia, Wang Deshun (who became known as "China's hottest grandpa"), Ron Jack Foley and Lono Brazil. The 87-year-old model René Glémarec appeared, along with his 86-year-old wife Marie-Louise, at Paris fashion week dressed in gender-neutral clothes made by his grandson Florentin Glémarec.

O'Pry became known on the world stage when he was chosen by Taylor Swift to play the role of her love interest for her 2014 Blank Space video. "It's the best-known moment of my career," O'Pry tells BBC Culture. "My career took a different road after that. It opened more doors for me. I'm very thankful, as I was able to be a part of that." Having adorned numerous magazine covers over the years, he has maintained a high profile. How has he achieved that? "You have to maintain humility in the industry. I'm going up against people that are all in a casting – dark hair, blue eyes. I'm going up against guys that look exactly like me and you have to be able to separate yourself. That’s a part of who you are on set and how you act and present yourself. I didn't try and make my face to look a certain way. This job kind of fell in my lap."

These motifs reflected Ratia's passion for modern architecture. In fact, her holistic vision of Marimekko as an entire lifestyle saw her plan a utopian village called Marikylä (Mari village) for her employees as part of her game plan to optimise their quality of life. Designed in the early 1960s by architect Aarno Ruusuvuori, it never materialised. However, employees at Marimekko's factory enjoyed other perks, including regular coffee breaks, hairdressers who styled their hair while they worked, saunas, a breakfast table, an open fire, and a summer cottage.

For Isola, art was a joyful activity: she worked cross-legged, listening to music, an unorthodox approach she described as "dancing with the brush". Her freewheeling designs were an extension of her unconventional life. She married three times, and in 1970 took off to Paris and had a dalliance with an Egyptian scholar that led to the creation of Arab-inspired patterns. She later lived for a while in Algeria with a lover, then travelled to North Carolina, where she painted the local landscapes. Isola created several Marimekko designs in collaboration with her daughter, Kristina.

Marimekko was mainly staffed by women, as the same image conveys: mostly female employees, sporting equally vibrant, boxy dresses, mill around on the driveway. The mansion's front doors are wide open, suggestive of Ratia's hospitality and receptive personality. "Armi loved bringing people from different parts of society together," says Kemell-Kutvonen. Her parties at Bökars, where a diverse guestlist feasted on crayfish and white wine, "were legendary", she adds.

Jackie Kennedy snapped up seven Marimekko dresses; a photo of her wearing one of them was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine in 1960. Other fans of the label included prominent architecture critic Jane Jacobs. Meanwhile, a photograph of O'Keeffe at her home in New Mexico in 1962 shows her wearing Eskolin-Nurmesniemi’s smock dress printed with aubergine and lilac stripes. O'Keeffe's love of the label stemmed from her interest in the late 19th-Century dress reform movement which had been promoted in the US by feminist campaigner Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Gilman also argued that housework should be shared equally by men and women and advocated women working outside of the home.

Marimekko's display caught the eye of architect and Harvard University professor Benjamin Thompson, who fostered Bauhaus values in the US. Thompson invited Ratia to exhibit the brand’s roomy, geometric dresses alongside homeware at his Design Research store (soon simply called DR) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, established in 1953 to provide ‘good design’ for modern homes. In 1946, he and Gropius, along with six other architects, had co-founded architectural firm The Architects' Collaborative (TAC) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its philosophy was that good design was to be found in everyday life.

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For Ratia, World War Two – during which Finland fought wars both against the Russians and N**i Germany – was traumatic. Two of her brothers died fighting the Russians. After the war, Finland retained its independence but had to cede Karelia to Russia, forcing Ratia to leave the region. "Ratia experienced homelessness," says Borrelli-Persson. "This led her to value and find beauty in the simple things of home rather than in fancy possessions."

Marimekko's unmistakable aesthetic is indivisible from the adventurous spirit of entrepreneur Armi Ratia, who co-founded the brand in 1951. Photographs of Ratia provide powerful projections of her personality and her brand's ethos. In one photo from the 1960s, she reclines on a hammock at her summer house in the countryside, Bökars, reading The Letters of F Scott Fitzgerald, copies of Elle and Vogue on her lap – a picture of bohemian, cultured bliss. By contrast, in one 1970s image, she cuts a formidable figure at her printing factory in Helsinki sporting a swashbuckling maxi-coat, trousers tucked into boots, looking single-minded and fearless.