NewsLetter, Sept'09

PaperDolls at Gdynia Design Days 2009 PaperDolls Design team wants to thank everyone who visited our container at Gdynia Design Days 9-19 July in Poland! We are very grateful for the organizes who invited us and gave us the opportunity to show our products. It was a very inspiring and successful event for us. http://gdyniadesigndays.eu

New PaperDolls products! We have expanded our product assortment with a few new products, which were first presented at the Gdynia Design Days in Poland: PaperDolls Notebooks We've done a series of notebooks with silkscreen printed covers and white sheets. You can find additional designs inside, so have fun discovering the secret contents of the notebooks. Notebooks come in size A5 and various colors. PaperDolls T-Shirts We made some hand printed T-shirts as well. The shirts are silkscreen printed, each with a unique print on it. Perfect to wear with skinny jeans or leggings. 100% cotton. PaperDolls Hangers We released special hangers for our t-shirts. Hangers are hand printed and decorated with jewelry. Made of birch plywood, silkscreen printed. PaperDolls Recycled Notebooks It's actually our second launch of re-notebooks. We make notebooks of our own paper leftovers and give them a new life. Those notebooks were extremely popular in Poland, we returned with none. 100% reused material: sketches, drawings, various papers etc. PaperDolls Caps For a warm and sunny weather in Poland, we made some silkscreen printed caps. Unique prints, handmade, 100% cotton. PaperDolls Pillow-Cases To catch all the good ideas in your sleep, we've created special pillow-cases. You can add the finishing touch by coloring it yourself! 100% cotton, checked pattern is screen printed.

PaperDolls' designer Virge Loo is back from China! We are happy, that our designer Virge Loo is back from China, where she was studying at Yunnan Normal University. Yes, it's great to be back! I was studying Modern Chinese at Yunnan Normal University in Kunming "The City of Eternal Spring", which is in Southeast China. So, how is it to be back in Estonia again, after so long time in China? Well, a bit odd at first. Everybody speaks the language I understand and people tend to look the same. After being away for almost a year, I have to get used to the life here again, which luckily is easier than the other way around. What has been most inspiring for you? The differences in nature, sounds and light I experienced in China. The light in Estonia is so blue and the shadows are so deep, I never noticed that before... The way things look from another angle, the distinctions in culture... But generally people and things are the same no matter where you are. What do you miss the most? I miss the good and fun people I met there, the food, the weather... I miss the opportunity to speak chinese outside of home, to hear the language and trying to put the puzzle together :) You gave PaperDolls brooches as a present in a wedding in China. How did people react there on the brooches? People were very surprised (in a good way) and welcomed the Dolls warmly. My teacher hopes we can start selling our Dolls in China, so that her children could play with them some day. And compliments were given to my name card, which seemed a piece of art by itself. Do you find similarities in Chinese and Estonian design? And PaperDolls design? Yes, there are some similarities between the Chinese and PaperDolls design. The Chinese are very fond of small, cute, lovely and shiny things... Things that have a good impact on you, not as much as how useful they are :) In China, you can buy all kinds of necklaces, small bags, socks, notebooks and so on, which are products (or copies) of famous design brands (though mostly western). They like characters like Hello Kitty, Paul Frank's Monkey, Pocca and other cartoon characters. I don't know much about their own design, but they really seem to like the western style and therefore, copy it. I know many local design studios recruit westerners... If PaperDolls would become a well-known brand in Europe, it could easily sell in China, especially in bigger cities like Beijing and Shanghai, which are more modern and have a higher standard of living. What´s next, you've got tons of new ideas to work on? Of course :) I will have an exhibition at the end of December this year. It's about the time I spent there and of what I experienced. The exhibition "Lu Wei* from China" will display a series of drawings in mixed techniques. I'm pretty sure the chinese influences won't fade away for some time and will have some impact on my design work for PaperDolls as well :) * Lu Wei is my Chinese name Check out my blog: http://virvarvur.blogspot.com PaperDollish products in China: