Lady Business: Helsinki memories, Marimekko’s founder, and so much Musk

Hello and welcome to Lady Business, a weekly newsletter about women, the business world, and all the ways they overlap. You can sign up for Lady Business and read previous issues here. This is the thirty-fifth issue, published July 19, 2018.
 

Finland's Fashionista

In the past week, I finished writing tens of thousands of words and flew to Houston and back (in thunderstorms, both ways, with many Cheerios). I’m a little drained now, and looking for joy! So, apropos of nothing at all, let me tell you about one of the best trips I took last year.

This is Helsinki. It's pretty gorgeous!
 
Helsinki was my favorite stop on a Copenhagen-to-Stockholm vacation last year, mostly because it was so unexpected. Finland’s capital has the high design, effortless chic and interesting food of Scandinavia, plus a little bit of Eastern European grunge (and, delightfully, a lot of Eastern European prices).
 
If you go around this time of year, which I highly recommend, Helsinki will never get fully dark. You may find yourself swimming in a heated pool by the Baltic Sea at 10 pm, or eating a post-karaoke pizza at midnight, with this sort of dusky-bright sky overhead:

 
Speaking of karaoke, you haven’t lived until you’ve done it Finnish-style. Or at least watched in awe as crowds of 40-something and 50-something Finns in suits and corporate sweater-sets rock out hard to local pop songs. You won’t recognize any of the melodies; and good luck following the Finnish lyrics on the bar's TV screens. Sip your "long drink" (gin and grapefruit soda, which approximates a slightly elevated Smirnoff Ice) and let the pros handle the singing.
 

The next morning, you should take a twenty-minute ferry ride from Helsinki’s harbor to the Suomenlinna islands, full of renovated army barracks and museums and an artists’ colony. (And baby ducks!) On your way back, stop by a Marimekko store to get fabulous floral-print fabrics from Finland’s most iconic designer.

 
Which brings us to the business part of this newsletter! Marimekko was founded in 1951 by Armi Ratia, whose life was both tragic and fabulous. She was born in Russian-occupied territory, a few years before Finland declared independence. Then, during World War II, she watched the Soviet Union stomp back into her homeland:
 

“My family burned their houses and escaped, so the Russians wouldn't find anything when they came,” Mrs. Ratia said. “All three of my brothers were killed in the fighting, and so was my sister's husband. He was a young composer, a very promising one.”

Her own husband survived, and eventually begged his wife to help him “straighten out the affairs of” an oilcloth company he’d purchased. Soon Ratia began printing textiles--though she didn’t know anything about printing--and started turning the company into one of the most recognizable fabric producers in the world. She “worked with demonic energy to build her company,” this 1979 New York Times profile reports, before getting into the fabulous bits: 
 

Her marriage didn't survive the strain. She and her husband drifted apart, and she had a 10‐year romance with an American diplomat. Why didn't she marry him? “I wanted to be an ambassador myself, not an ambassador's wife, shaking hands and serving tea,” she said.

By age 67, when Times journalist R.W. Apple visited her country house near the Gulf of Finland, Ratia was running a profitable company that sold $15 million worth of fashions annually--which equates to more than $51 million today, adjusted for inflation. She still ran day-to-day operations and oversaw 375 employees, including--except for her hapless husband--all six of Marimekko’s original workers.
 
Two months later, she died. The New York Times did not commission a separate obit (paging Overlooked!), instead running a wire story that seems partially indebted to Apple’s profile. Which ended on an ominously prescient epitaph:
 

She is deeply concerned with the fate of her country, and she is not pleased by what she sees around her.

“We almost need another war,” she said, “so that we can learn again what matters in life. People here are so spoiled, and their values are confused. The politicians forget what we struggled for.”

Canaries Tweeting in Coal Mines

So last week, I made a passing comment about Elon Musk, Silicon Valley celebrity and Iron Man inspiration, whose Twitter habits are increasingly resembling those of another recent Helsinki visitor. Then this happened:
 

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was one of the top 50 donors last quarter to a PAC aimed at maintaining Republican control of the House, new federal filings show.

Oh, and this:
 

The tech billionaire Elon Musk on Wednesday walked back his baseless claim that a British diver involved in the cave rescue efforts in Thailand was a pedophile, an accusation made after the man criticized a submarine that Mr. Musk had said he built to help with the rescue.

And this:
 

Current and former employees describe 12-hour shifts as common, with some going as long as 16 hours. To battle exhaustion, employees drink copious amounts of Red Bull, sometimes provided free by Tesla. New employees develop what’s known as the “Tesla stare.” “They come in vibrant, energized,” says Mikey Catura, a Tesla production associate. “And then a couple weeks go by, and you’ll see them walking out of the building just staring out into space like zombies.”

It’s almost as if lashing out at women is some sort of warning sign! Or as if spending time on Twitter attacking your critics is incompatible with providing focused leadership. Crazy theory, I know.
 

Lady Bits:

 --Another update from last week: After I cited its diversity report, Facebook put out its 2018 version, announcing that women employed in technical roles have increased from 19 percent to a whopping 21.6 percent. Yay, progress? (“Black and Hispanic employees in technical roles remained at 1 percent and 3 percent.”) 
 
--And to bring us back around to international political intrigue: I highly recommend Secret City, an Australian thriller miniseries now on Netflix. It’s taut, funny, and well-acted; the cast includes Oscar nominee Jacki Weaver, gleefully doing her best Aussie Dick Cheney, and Fringe star Anna Torv, playing a smart, experienced, and ethical (!!) investigative reporter. (A rare role for fictional women journalists!) The ending didn’t quite hold together, and there’s a more deeply problematic choice to cast a cis man as a transgender woman character. But for some well-plotted escapism these days, may I suggest spending six hours focusing on the collapse of a fictional Australian government?

 
Thank you for reading, commenting, and subscribing to this newsletter! Please tell your friends to sign up here, let me know what you think about this week's issue, and what else you'd like to see me write about: maria.aspan@gmail.com