Kaj Franck Design Prize 2004
Fashion designer Ritva-Liisa Pohjalainen
The Kaj Franck Design Prize for 2004 was awarded to fashion designer Ritva-Liisa Pohjalainen (born 1949). Ritva-Liisa Pohjalainen is an unrelenting designer whose diligent, everyday toil is in the spirit of Kaj Franck himself and she has been an inexhaustible source of models for industry which have been available to all. The prize jury particularly appreciated Ritva-Liisa Pohjalainen’s decades of ongoing work with industry. With her work in the clothing industry, she has shown that collaboration between a designer and the producer can bring everyday happiness to the user and commercial success to the manufacturer.
A member of the Fashion Designers MTO association, Ritva-Liisa Pohjalainen has been professionally involved in the Finnish fashion and clothing industry for thirty years. After graduating from the University of Art and Design Helsinki in 1974, she has been the head designer for several companies in the fashion industry. She has most recently designed the Ril’s collection, bearing her name, for the L-Fashion Group of Lahti. She has designed both manufactured and unique, one-off evening gowns. In her own design office, which she has founded this year, Ritva-Liisa Pohjalainen designs and realizes her own projects alongside other work.
Ritva-Liisa Pohjalainen has developed her professional skills in various ways, including active travel in different parts of Europe. Before the Ril’s collection appeared in 1996, she spent a six-month period studying the fashion market in England and working in fabric design in Italy.
Ritva-Liisa Pohjalainen’s distinctive concepts and style have made her one Finland’s most renowned and professionally respected designers. Her professionalism and talent have been noted over the years with many other significant prizes and awards, including the Ornamo prize of 1978 and the Golden Clotheshanger prize of 1998.
