Moomin meets minimalism in a new collaboration with Rue de Tokyo

Though you wouldn’t know it to look at them, this year Finnish icon Moomin turns 80 years old. To mark the Moomin 80th anniversary, Copenhagen-based brand Rue de Tokyo has created a capsule collection that puts a minimalist twist on the beloved Moomin characters, featuring never-before-used anniversary artwork. The line drawings are scrawled across a collection that includes chore coats, work shirts, skirts, totes and t-shirts, all realised in Rue de Tokyo’s carefully sourced textiles.

Created by Finnish author and illustrator Tove Jansson, the Moomin characters – who appear both in a series of books and via animated cartoon – populate childhoods in Scandinavia and beyond. This isn’t the first capsule collection to mark the Moomin 80th anniversary; the celebration was kicked off by an Acne Studios capsule, featuring more classic cartoon depictions of the characters.

“I grew up watching VHS with Moomin cartoons and have always really liked the universe around the Moominvalley,” says Rue de Tokyo founder David Andersson Sahlin, who was born and raised on the Swedish countryside but now lives in Copenhagen. As the name suggests, Rue de Tokyo takes its inspiration from both France and Japan, where Moomin looms large (the first Japanese translations of Moomin appeared in the 1960s). It was Moomin who reached out to Andersson Sahlin to suggest the collaboration. While the designer was “directly intrigued”, it was the anniversary artwork (“More scribbles, outline drawings and mature artworks, rather than the normal Moomin prints that we are used to seeing,” says the designer) that brought the capsule together.

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Andersson Sahlin began by applying the drawings, which are inspired by the original illustrations by Jansson and created by Moomin Characters (the Finnish company responsible for Moomin), to Rue de Tokyo’s signature garments. The twill Cameron chore jacket, for instance, and the A-line Pen skirt. “Our way of adding the artworks on to the styles almost reminds me about tattoos on a body,” says Andersson Sahlin. The capsule is finished with a bespoke logo, which finds a Moomin balancing on the brand’s initials: RDT.

While Andersson Sahlin is partial to the character Snufkin, the hat-wearing vagabond, and the temperamental Little My, the capsule is about celebrating the whole of Moominvalley. “This collaboration is not about highlighting a specific character,” he says. “But more the unique and inclusive universe that Tove Janson created 80 years ago.”

The Rue De Tokyo x Moomin collection will be sold online at ruedetokyo.com and in selected stores from January 2025.