From Sheer Curtains to Streetwear, Inside Helsinki's Circular Tennis Label
photography Toivo Molin
hair and makeup Maria Boucht
models Alina Wikström / Paparazzi Model Managment, Aleksi Lindqvist, Natasha Churchill
assistant Emilia Lindgren
image courtesy Lucky Loser Sports
text Claudia Ugalde
Playful, resourceful, unmistakably Helsinki – Lucky Loser turns deadstock sportswear and second-hand curtains into the most fun tennis has looked in years. Behind the Finnish brand is Krista Virtanen, working on her own terms and leading with her love of the sport, and a wish to pull fashion’s idea of it away from pure competition, towards movement, wellbeing, and doing things together.
Tennis’ dress code hasn’t changed: whites, quiet, some clubs stricter than ever, but everywhere else the sport shows up, courtside, on the street, in tenniscore feeds, colour and personality already run the show. Virtanen just decided to bring that energy onto the court.
The collection started as a Lounais-Suomen Jätehuolto pilot in 2024 and 2025, and has kept developing since with Dura Studio, a Finnish production house producing small batches with local seamstresses. The supply chain starts at a dump. What comes out the other end gets redyed after sewing, to shake off the smell of its former life. Every fabric used comes from sportswear rescued off the waste pile, paired with something nobody asked for: sheer curtain fabric, cut and rebuilt into pieces that look like the best thing in the room, not something somebody threw out.
The circular sportswear underneath comes in whatever colours and sizes landed in the pile, which means the finished pieces carry a range no single supplier could have planned on purpose. The first drop launched at Fashion In Helsinki this spring, and it is already available on Virtanen’s own site and at Reloop.
It doesn’t stay confined to a court either. Lucky Loser reads just as well as streetwear: the same pieces, the same slightly unreasonable colour logic, just moved off the lines and into everyday life.
Sports don’t always have to be serious, or about winning, and sometimes losing is the beginning of something new. That’s a fitting philosophy for a sport that treats losing as a small tragedy. Lucky Loser treats it as raw material instead, playful over competitive, colour over compliance, charm over discipline.
Fashion could use more of exactly this right now: less seriousness, less proving a point, more actual fun. Sustainable clothing doesn’t have to look like a compromise, curtains and old sportswear turned into something you’d actually want to wear twice.
In Her Own Words
Claudia Ugalde: Where did Lucky Loser start, and who is it for?
Krista Virtanen: Practicing sport doesn’t always have to be serious, or about winning. Honestly, the spark was just my own love of tennis, and wanting to bring movement, wellbeing, a sense of community into fashion too. It started with playgrounds, really, and the joy of doing things together.
CU: Why curtains, of all things?
KV: Sports textiles, technical polyester especially, are one of the hardest materials in the whole industry to recycle. Most of what gets thrown out still just ends up burned for energy. None of this, the curtains, the sportswear, started as fabric bought for the collection. Everything gets redyed after sewing too, just to get rid of the smell from its old life.
CU: You’ve mentioned Copenhagen’s Superkilen as a reference point. Why that space specifically?
KV: It’s a place where completely different groups of people end up sharing the same square metre, without much friction, honestly. I’d like to see a bit more of that same do-it-together energy here in Finland too.
The label is already collaborating beyond its own rack: Lucky Loser x Sidoste turned the offcuts that don’t work for socks into an organic cotton pair instead. The collection is available to shop now through kristavirtanendesign.fi/store, and via Reloop, the Swedish marketplace built around upcycled fashion.
all shoes Beyond Helsinki
all socks Sidoste
