Maritime Connections

A labyrinth of sweaters, mending, and the sea.

Every now and then I feel like Teflon. Nothing sticks, nothing leaves its mark on me. I’m drifting in the world in my own bubble, dabbling in my personal likes, untethered. And then all of a sudden a trail of connecting dots emerges, out of nowhere.

Recently, my friend Minni and I spent a whole day at the biggest recycling center in the greater Helsinki region. It’s a massive place and we combed through almost every section of it: clothes, accessories, housewares, books. (We spent a long time with the books.) On our way out we found one more rack of clothes. Minni came across a coat she loved, and I found the sweater of my dreams.

It’s a dark gray chunky vintage turtleneck sweater. It’s handmade, with beautifully long sleeves and a high neck that sits up unfolded. It is perfect. I certainly didn’t need to buy another sweater. I have some truly great ones but they often feel either too hot or too bulky to wear. Here was this lovely sweater and I couldn’t leave it behind.

Just the week before I had met up with my brother’s family for brunch and I had worn a thrifted asymmetrical sweater over a big striped shirt. As I had been picking out my clothes for that day I had made a mental note that I haven’t worn my sweaters much at all this past winter. I thought to myself that perhaps I need to consider whether I am a sweater person, if there is such a thing, but I disregarded the notion soon after. It’s never really about a particular category of clothing for me. It always comes down to the individual piece. I love a sweater if it’s the right one.

This morning I happened upon a YouTube video by Beth Jones. In her video she talked about thrifting the in-between-season trends, and one of the trends she mentioned was the fisherman aesthetic: workwear-inspired clothes teamed with bulky sweaters in oatmeal, navy or gray.

Watching Beth’s video took me back to last September, when my friend Minni and I had driven to the city of Kotka, which houses Finland’s Maritime Museum. They had an exhibition there called Oceanista – Fashion and The Sea. The exhibition featured sea-themed works by Iris Van Herpen, Jean Paul Gaultier, Versace, Margiela, Chanel, and countless others. They also had vintage maritime workwear on display, including this stunning light gray fisherman’s sweater.

The exhibition notes mentioned that the sweater had been worn from the 1940s to the 1970s. The mended elbows really spoke to me.

As it happened, in January someone in our apartment building wanted to get rid of a big box of old yarns. I took the yarn home and clumsily learned to darn my wool socks that had worn through in the heel. I spent a lot of my free time in January and February mending my wool socks. It felt therapeutic and grounding, like I wrote in this newsletter.

And then I thought about my father. The last couple of times that I’ve gone to see my father, who just turned 79, we’ve talked about clothes a little bit. He’s found an outdoorsy clothing brand that he loves and can’t stop talking about. The clothes fit his tall and slender figure, and they’re practical for his life. He goes out for walks with his dog, and he loves to go fishing on the island that he and his partner live on about a third of the year. When I visit him on the island, we row to the fishing nets together and always catch something. My dad guts and fillets a fish faster than anyone, and the fish soup he makes is the tastiest.

I owe all of my maritime connections to my father. He was a windsurfer, and he often took the family to the beach when I was little. I can still remember how my hair smelled in the evenings after a day frolicking by the sea, and the way pine needles stuck to the soles of my bare feet in the caravan site by the beach that we frequented. I’m not a great swimmer, I never took up windsurfing or any other water sport, but I’m awfully fond of the sea, the sounds of waves, and the cawing of seagulls. The seaside feels like home.

These photos are from my visit to my dad's island in the summer of 2022.

Somehow all of these things came together today: the old sweater at the Oceanista exhibition, the perfect sweater at the recycling center, the yarn, the mending, and my father, the fisherman. It got me thinking about how tacked on and costume-y trends often feel, but when there’s a genuine connection to real life, all of a sudden the notion of something being trendy becomes completely irrelevant. The clothes we are emotionally, inexplicably drawn to show the little pockets of life that reside in our past, present, and future. And that’s a beautiful thing.

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