Petri Burtsoff

Tucked away in a vast pine forest in southwestern Finland, Paimio Sanatorium stands as a masterpiece of modernism and the career-defining work of Alvar and Aino Aalto. Completed in 1933, the building was designed as a tuberculosis sanatorium but it soon became a project that propelled Finnish architecture onto the global stage.

Finland is an unlikely supplier of top talent for the fashion industry. The city’s unofficial fashion week, Fashion in Helsinki, ended this weekend and has emerged as an important stop for recruiters and journalists. “I am here to look for up-and-coming talent from Finland,” says Alexis Djouahra, director of communications for Villa Noailles, a French arts centre and organiser of the Hyères International Festival of Fashion, Photography and Accessories.

From his office on Tallinn’s Toompea Hill, Estonia’s prime minister, Kristen Michal, can see the city’s picturesque Old Town. A millennium ago, a fortress was established on this hill to protect the city from invaders. In this respect, not much has changed for today’s occupants of the neoclassical Stenbock House, the official seat of the Estonian government.