Sascha Camilli

Finland’s top fashion event, Helsinki Fashion Week, returns this month with a crucial message about the importance of sustainability in the industry. Since its inception, Helsinki Fashion Week has blazed a trail championing ethical fashion, including its landmark decision to ban leather from its catwalks from 2019 – a move for which it received worldwide praise. As a keynote speaker at this year’s event, I will be highlighting the reasons why we at PETA urged the organisers to make this change and why it’s time the rest of the fashion world followed their compassionate lead.

Italians will vote on a controversial constitutional reform that may determine the fate of Matteo Renzi’s government. Yet neither Italy’s membership of the EU and the common currency, nor its financial stability are at stake.

On 4 December 2016, Italians will vote on a constitutional reform proposed by the current government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. If accepted, the reform will change the institutional setup of the country. Most significantly, it would end Italy’s ‘perfect bicameralism’, in which the two legislative houses have nearly identical powers.

Only a few of us residing in Finland have heard of Zanjan, a city of nearly 400 000 inhabitants in the northwest of Iran. The image we attach to it has little to do with reality -a rich heritage of astonishing handcrafts and an incredibly tasty cuisine. Too often the scandal-oriented media shapes our worlds and defines people’s destinies. Vahid Mortezaei, a Zanjan-origin food designer residing in Helsinki, knows that it takes colossal amounts of courage and determination to break these stereotypes.

A little variety of rice would be nice

It may seem counter productive to go back to the basics after discovering all the joys and weirder wonders of the Asian store. But you must learn to walk before you fly little grasshopper, so let me introduce you to the most basic, and yet arguably the most important of Asian foodstuffs: rice. Rice is the basis of any meal; it is the backbone, and the first and last thing you would eat as an Asian. The very first of solid foods fed to babies, and the very last thing served at banquets. Rice symbolises fertility, plenty, good health, luck, bounty and all things good. Surely you wouldn’t want to neglect such an important guest at your dinner table?

Helsinkians can rest easy – everything they’ve ever needed now in one place.

“ONE DAY, it was the 12 of March, Paolo [Morcucci] came to my place,” begins Stefano Metta. It was a Friday and the two of them were living in Mazzano Romano, a small medieval town close to Rome. “I’m the owner of some restaurants and bars, and he told me why don’t we open something in Finland? I said to Paolo, why not.”