Sep

29

A-von it all.

Filed Under Inside Out 

marimekko palette Avon

On the same day, I learned of two bits of news that were related and un-related all at the same time, leaving me with mixed feelings. One, I learned that Riitta Immonen, one of the founders of Finnish textiles and clothing design, marimekko, had died, in late August. Two, I learned that institutional American door-to-door makeup company, Avon, had partnered up with marimekko to create limited-edition eye shadow and all-over face, fall palettes. The obit was reported in The New York Times; the product PR, tucked in the pages of Lucky. Two publications talking to two sides of my multi-faceted personality. Confusing? Not really, but I couldn’t help but feel bad, guilty, happy and hopeful all at once.

The obit made me sad about life in general. How often do we hear of one’s life until it comes to an end? And how often do we only get the highlights and not the in-betweens, the things that were done before and after the bigger strokes the individual painted? All the scraps and bits that are usually on the cutting room floor of how that person was shaped, was changed and became one’s own aspiration.

But then, how does one find acceptance? Particularly, how could I be appeased by the news of Riitta’s death with a picture of a compact? How can a material good be the closest thing to understanding a human being? And why is there guilt in trying to reach such a creative gesture, a worldly gesture, in coveting a little pressed pigment?

This is silly, isn’t it? And yet I can’t help it.

Riitta had a family of her own. A family in the very traditional sense. With spouse(s), children, grandchildren, and a remarkable thing, great-grandchildren also. Individuals who she shaped and in turn, shaped her. But because Riitta was an artist, she also had a non-traditional family; the one created by the like-minded, the artistic, and the appreciative for representing the world in a way that renewed its life, and simultaneously the viewers’ investment in it–life, the universe, and everything–too.

The non-traditional family doesn’t receive love through conversation, visits, and hugs. It gets love through works, items, and in this case, poppy prints, partnerships, and palettes.

The consumer idea of it irks me, but that is the price to pay when you love in a grand way. It’s the price to pay when you have so many of life’s before and afters, scraps and bits, to be so thankful for, to help you love in the way that you do. To help you create in the way that you do.

And so I will buy into it. Not the corporation, the retail therapy, the keeping up with the Joneses, or the desire for stuff. I am buying into hope. I am buying into the idea that someone else sees the world sometimes the way I do. I am buying into the idea of one person’s shared idea of life’s beauty. I am buying into the idea that someone’s image of indelibility is just not somewhere, some of the time, but everywhere, all the time.

I’m going to do this because I have no idea what shape my life will take. (A mix of traditional and non-traditional?) I just know I want it all, because I only know how to love immensely. On a from-poppies-to-people kind of scale.

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