About Elīna Siliņa

Elīna Siliņa is a Latvian fashion and textile artist based in Helsinki, working between fashion, textiles, and contemporary craftsmanship. Her practice explores textiles as vessels of memory, identity, and cultural continuity, with a focus on Baltic and Northern European heritage, sustainability, and women’s lived experience.

She holds a BA in Fashion Design from the Art Academy of Latvia and an MA in Fashion, Clothing and Textile Design from Aalto University. Her work combines research-led design with traditional textile techniques such as knitting, crochet, embroidery, felting, and weaving, often developed through slow, material-led processes and in dialogue with local craft knowledge. Working primarily with natural and existing materials — including wool, linen, hemp, nettle, deadstock yarns, surplus leather, and amber — she approaches sustainability not only as a material choice, but as a cultural and emotional practice.

Elīna’s work has received international recognition. In 2021, she was awarded the Chloé Prize at the 36th International Festival of Fashion, Photography and Accessories in Hyères for her collection For Sally, created during her BA studies at the Art Academy of Latvia. Her later BA graduation collection, Somewhere Else, explored childhood imagination, fantasy, and transformation through upcycled materials. Her MA collection, Daughter of the North, received the Finnish Fashion and Textile Award in 2023 and reimagined Baltic ethnographic heritage through contemporary knitwear, crochet, natural dyes, and symbolic textile construction.

Across her practice, Elīna is interested in how ancestral techniques can be carried forward without nostalgia — as living, evolving forms of protection, storytelling, and connection between generations.