“It’s just cool for a home to have a little bit of nature indoors. How lovely is it to open your eyes in the morning and the first thing you see is this beautiful flower beside your bed?” asks Kathleen Hyppolite, who runs the New York-based floral design company, Kat Flower. We’re talking about how trendy floral arranging has become among twenty- and thirtysomethings these past two years, a movement we jokingly call a “petal-ution.” It may sound slightly Martha Stewart in a middle-aged, full-time, stay-at-home mom kind of way. But in actuality, the trend is being fueled by fashion lovers, hipsters and arty types the world over who are tricking out their flats with carefully curated arrangements made with their own thorn-pricked hands. Basically, the kinds of people you’d imagine spending their mornings nursing a hangover after a swanky night out, rather than rolling out of bed to trek to a flower market. “I think it’s a result of the flower blogs that have become so popular,” Hyppolite says of sites such as her own, Kat flower The Little Flower School and Lotte and Bloom. They’ve elevated the idea of flowers from being merely something that you grab from the grocery store and stick in a vase at home, to an accessory that can really personalize your space in as meaningful a way as a great painting. Hyppolite gives us a little workshop.
Step One
“When you bring flowers home, the first thing you should do is clean the vessel. And a vessel doesn’t have to be a vase, you can use a water glass, old spaghetti jars, a tiny little votive—anything that can hold water,” Hyppolite says.
Step Two
“As a designer, it drives me crazy when I see people who just stick cut flowers into water without doing anything to them. As soon as you cut a flower from its natural source, the earth, it’s on suicide watch,” she explains. “So you need to do a series of small steps to prolong its life. That said, remove any foliage on the stem that is below the water line in the vessel because the foliage can introduce bacteria into the water. You don’t want to have leaves floating around in there. Keep the leaves around the top of the blooms. They are on the flower for a reason. And be sure to cut the stem on an angle. This gives the stem the best possible chance to drink and flourish.”
Step Three
“If you can wear clothes, you can arrange flowers. Approach it in the same way,” she says. “For example, you can do interesting things by mixing flowers of varying texture. A big bloom can look pretty with something more vine-y. This makes the flowers look more distinct. You can see the difference in texture between a flower like a dahlia and something like cockscomb.”
Step Four
“When it comes to the shape of the arrangement itself. I don’t believe that there is necessarily a wrong way to do this,” she says. “It’s hard to mess it up. Just trust your instincts and be sure to place the flowers in the vessel at an angle in order to maximize the flower’s potential to drink.”
And ta da!
“Don’t forget to switch out the water every day. If it begins to look cloudy, change it immediately because this will prolong the life of the flowers.”
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