Flower gowns, anyone? These trends are giving floristry new life
International fairs, botanical wearables and a farm-to-table movement are reinvigorating the floral industry By Linda Besner (Courtesy of Rosalie Villanueva)
Joezel Yumul is wavering between angel wings and monarch butterfly wings. Angel wings made of masses of white baby’s breath would be more ethereal, but butterfly wings of orange chrysanthemums would be more dramatic especially considering the wings will be attached to a life-sized mannequin in a ruffled gown also entirely made of fresh flowers. “I’m thinking [of] something really a little bit crazy,” the floral designer tells me by phone from his Toronto studio in early March. Crazy because he wants to top his design from last year, when he worked for 48 hours straight, sticking 1,400 individual stems of statice and blue globe thistle into a frame he’d made out of dollar-store pool noodles. The result was a purple-and-white mermaid gown, al