Fashion month has just kicked off, which spells a busy time of year for Floom florists. Up and down the runway, the flowers keep on coming. At New York Fashion Week there have already been roses, dahlias and anthuriums, shapes and prints inspired by nature, hair bouquets and flower crowns. Another case in point: Kate Spade models wore florals and carried flowers – while walking through secret city gardens. But, while fashion’s affinity for floristry may be blooming, it isn’t anything new. Here are five other big flowers-in-fashion moments.
Ralph Lauren
For Ralph Lauren, sometimes more is more. In 2017 he transformed the brand’s Madison Avenue flagship store into a tropical garden. Across two floors, “living” walls were covered with more than 100,000 white orchids flown in from all around the world, plus 300 air plants, succulents, moss and vines, with mechanical butterflies flitting among the blooms.
Dries Van Noten
Dries Van Noten has been into gardening for over three decades. “For many years, I separated my work as a designer and a gardener,” said the Belgian designer, “yet I had often wondered how these two beloved worlds of my life could collide and collude.” At Paris Fashion Week in 2016, he froze intricate flower bouquets designed by Japanese artist Azuma Makoto in huge blocks of ice, which served as columns along the runway showcasing the collection’s black, yellow and gold fabrics. Flowers have remained consistent in his work ever since: earlier this year he created floral prints using photographs of flowers – roses, salvias, dahlias, delphiniums and more – that he’d grown in his garden.
Christian Dior
Christian Dior named his designs after flowers from his garden. Nodding to this in his debut haute couture show for Dior in 2012, Raf Simons collaborated with the Belgian florist Mark Colle to cover the walls of a grand mansion with one million blooms, each room with different colours and varieties of white orchids, yellow mimosa blue delphiniums. Almost overnight, the “flower wall” trend was born.
Moschino
Surreal: at Moschino’s Spring 2018 show, Jeremy Scott dressed Gigi Hadid as a giant, blossoming floral bouquet. In the same show other models wore boots overflowing with spring flowers and skirts made entirely of roses. The model-as-bouquet look has history: in 1982, Thierry Mugler dressed his models as painted roses; while for his spring 2007 show, Alexander McQueen transformed models into walking flower ensembles.
Rodarte
Flower crowns stole the show at Rodarte’s spring 2018 collection. They also proved that you can never have too much baby’s breath, which, until then, was renowned as one of the most unstylish flowers. The LA brand followed up the trick earlier this year with yet more flower crowns, this time making unique hair bouquets of fresh roses for all of the 48 models walking in the show. The “wear-as-many-flowers-in-your-hair-and-on-your-head-as-possible” trend, as one fashion critic labelled it, is alive and well.
Make your own fashionable moments, shop flowers now.
