Rouge Arrangements
A week before Valentine’s Day, In Bloom executed the centerpieces for an annual hospital fundraiser held by The Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center here in New York City. Hosted at Rouge Tomate and sponsored by the fashion brand Milly, the luncheon featured an upstairs area where guests enjoyed a showcase of the Milly collection in addition to a downstairs seated lunch for 160 people including an honorary Pediatric specialist.
The florals provided for the upstairs “World of Milly” made use of the brand’s signature pink using roses, spray roses, and ranunculus.
The design for the banquet table arrangements evolved from an anemone motif found in a fabric sample from the season’s collection. The final red arrangements incorporated open roses, spray roses, hypericum berries, alstromeria and anemones in black glass cubes.
The overall tablescape combined not only well with the Milly aesthetic but also with the restaurant interior.
We very much enjoyed the planning process for this special event, and give our thanks to the MSKCC event chairs & coordinators for their thoughtful compliments.
-Parker
Long Live McQueen!
Last Friday marked the 2-year anniversary of the death of British fashion genius Alexander McQueen. Though the spirit of his creation has been carried on with the creative direction of Sarah Burton, we appreciate looking back to the designer’s original designs finding parallel between feminine beauty and flowers.
McQueen's genius lies in his ability to dress a woman in an entire English rose garden or condense a wild lily patch into a single pair of high heels. In expressing a woman’s allure through the juxtaposition of female strength and sensuality with fragility, McQueen proves that the medium can be the message -- in this case, it is flowers. While McQueen's designs may seem to blur the line between art and fashion, his ready-to-wear garments are also certainly wearable and the patterns always beautiful (as seen in this anemone-inspired mini dress).
Looking beyond pattern, McQueen often streamlined floral silhouettes for his couture gowns in a much less literal interpretation of flowers.
What McQueen appears to have done is not only borrow the lines of the fluted tulip but also reinterpret them. In some sense, he beautifies what is already beautiful.
Certain couture ensembles such as this billowy, black silk chiffon gown even seem to evoke rare blooms (such as the bat orchid) perhaps without the designer's own intention...
... herein lies McQueen's genius and our greatest appreciation for a designer who can veritably transform flowers into dresses, and women into flowers.
Long Live McQueen! May his designs remain forever in bloom...
-Parker Voss
