# Hellä Mietonen

> The Hellä Mietonen shampoo bottle, shaped like a human figure, designed by Marjut Rimminen at Womena in Helsinki in 1972 and held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

This is the Markdown rendering of [https://marjutrimminen.com/packaging/](https://marjutrimminen.com/packaging/), generated from the page itself. It carries the same words in the same order, with every image reduced to its description. The short map for machines is at [https://marjutrimminen.com/llms.txt](https://marjutrimminen.com/llms.txt). This page in Finnish is at [https://marjutrimminen.com/fi/pakkaus/](https://marjutrimminen.com/fi/pakkaus/).

1972 · Shampoo bottle · Womena Advertising, Helsinki

In the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

![Three white Hellä Mietonen shampoo bottles in a row, beaded with water, each with a fluted spherical cap](https://marjutrimminen.com/images/hella-mietonen/hella-mietonen-shampoo-bottle-1972-three-bottles.jpg)

A shampoo bottle shaped like a human figure, released in Finland in 1972 and re-released in 2017. Marjut designed the packaging while working at the advertising agency Womena in Helsinki, in the same year as [her first commercial](https://marjutrimminen.com/commercials/#vivante). It was considered sculptural enough that the bottle was acquired for the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Hellä Mietonen reads in Finnish like a person's name, Hellä for the first name and Mietonen for the surname, while the two words also mean gentle and mild. The product was given a body to match, with a fluted cap sitting on top of it like a head.

Hellä Mietonen, puhdasta, mietoa shampoota, joka pesee hiuksenne hellästi vaahdoten. Clean, mild shampoo that washes your hair gently in lather.

![The Hellä Mietonen bottle in three views on a dark ground: the front with its label, the back with no graphics, and looking down onto the ribbed cap](https://marjutrimminen.com/images/hella-mietonen/hella-mietonen-shampoo-bottle-1972-front-back-top.jpg)

Turned around, with the graphics out of sight, the form is a body, sensual and feminine, soft the whole way round with no hard edge on it. It holds and squeezes beautifully in the hand.

Marjut designed the bottle and worked on the project with Kirsti Paakkanen, who owned Womena and led the brand and its advertising, and who went on to buy and revive Marimekko in the 1990s. The bottle is also held by the [Helsinki City Museum](https://www.finna.fi/Record/hkm.HKMS000005:km0000ll68).